Due to afforested plantations have a considerable amount of biological carbon sequestration capacity, the government has been aiming at large area of plantations on the agricultural lands to relieve the pressure of global warming and face the coming of Post Kyoto Protocol. How to use satellite images combined with ground survey data to accurately estimate the biomass of plantation carbon sequestration has become an international issue. In this study, the afforested lands between 2002 and 2009 belonging to Taiwan Sugar Company’s Dai-Lung and Dai-Fun farms at Guangfu township, Hualien county were used as experimental area. The FORMOSAT- 2 (FS2) satellite image of this area acquired on February 13, 2009 and plantations maps of these two farms were collected as geographic information for biomass estimation. After a procedure of radiation normalization for the FS2 image, we applied soil adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) of FS2 focused on plantations of Fraxinus griffithii (Fg) that occupied 17%, a total area of 168 hectares distributed in the area, to classifying the SAVI of them to 5 separated grades. Considering the spatial heterogeneity of SAVI on graded patches of plantations, a stratified purposive sampling method investigated a total of 70 ground plots (20 m x 20 m) , in which per–tree field survey was made, was conducted for the study. After filtering out 10 plots through data exploration procedure and spatial correlation analysis, the optimal linear regression model for the estimates of volume per hectare was established by linking mean SAVI and average timber volume per hectare of 60 plots. Referencing to IPCC formula and optimal conversion factors from domestic researches, the amount of carbon sequestration of Fg at each plantation patch and in the whole experimental area was calculated and evaluated. The results show that the optimal regression model derived from the methods can explain the variation amounted to 75%, which is comparable to some best results of oversea researches and enhanced much more reliability when compared with the past studies conducted at mountain areas in Taiwan. The estimated average Fg stock volume is 16.93 ± 1.16 m3ha-1, average amount of carbon sequestration is 7.55 ± 0.52 ton ha-1 and the total is 1,276.40 ± 87.28 ton on the whole experimental area. In addition, the discussion of this study explores that the use of regression estimation method is superior to direct estimation method from the sample plots and the optimal number of ground plots is 40.

Climate change has become on inevitable trend and influenced huge ranges all over the world. Therefore we should reduce carbon emissions and plant trees to achieve the mitigation of climate change. Taiwan Sugar Corporation in Ping-Tung transformed the agricultural lands to the afforestation of flat lands which’s been operated in coordination with government’s policies in 2002. By analyzing two images of 2005 and 2009 used to be the materials, this research estimated the afforestation’s Carbon Storage in Ping-Tung of Taiwan Sugar Corporation by vegetation index. The results showed that the farm covering area of forest vegetation is 1,839 ha in 2009, and the annual carbon accumulation was 6.693 C Mg ha-1, and 12,308.43 C Mg in total. In 2005, the average annual carbon storage capacity is 6.147 C Mg ha-1, and 11,304.33C Mg in total.

Global Positioning System (GPS) has been widely used in various applications such as geodetic control networks and site velocity estimation. Traditionally, site velocities have been determined using relative GPS positioning. However, the obtained velocity results are thus relative in nature. In recent years, the precise point positioning (PPP) technique, which uses International GNSS Services (IGS) products -- precise satellite ephemerides and clocks -- to directly estimate site positions in the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF), has become a promising tool for absolute site velocity estimation. Nevertheless, the PPP-derived site positions have been reported to be partially biased as a result of the fact that the above IGS products are based on the loosely constrained IGS analysis centre (AC) solutions. So it is an interesting issue to examine the accuracy of PPP-derived site velocities. In this research, we computed a set of PPP-derived velocity solutions for 33 evenly distributed IGS global tracking stations from 2002 to 2010, and compared them with their respective quantities defined in the ITRF. During the ITRF2000 period, the velocity differences in the east, north, and up directions are 0.22±1.34, -0.93±0.89, 4.82±2.20 mm/yr, respectively. After performing the 7-parameter Helmert transformation to absorb the systematic biases between the PPP results and the ITRF, the differences are significantly reduced to -0.07±1.29, -0.25±0.57, -0.00±2.22 mm/yr, respectively. During the ITRF2005 period, the velocity differences in the east, north, and up directions are -0.07±0.73, -0.28±0.53, 2.50±2.04 mm/yr, and 0.05±0.64, -0.33±0.42, 0.00±2.01 mm/yr after Helmert transformation. Only the vertical component is notably improved by the transformation. This indicates that the quality of IGS products improves with time so the biases existed in the PPP solutions are gradually diminishing. It is concluded that under the current ITRF2005, one can reliably use the PPP technique to obtain highly accurate, on the level of sub-mm/yr, absolute horizontal site velocities.

The detail of a building model can be distinguished into block models, roof structures, facade structures and indoor structures. The detailed model is not only similar to its true appearance, but also can be applied to more delicate aspects, which may facilitate the decision making procedure. In order to improve the level-of-detail of a building model, this research has developed an automatic line extraction procedure for facade, including orientation determination, multiple images matching and line fitting. A large number of conjugate points in multiple images are generated by Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF). Orientation determination can then be done by bundle adjustment using tie points and control points. Aiming on linear features, object-based matching is applied to decrease the effect of image difference caused by scale, rotation and relief displacement. Finally, 3D line fitting is done by Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC). The experimental results indicate that the Root-Mean-Square-Error (RMSE) of orientation determination in X, Y, and Z directions are 1.6cm, 3.2cm and 2.2cm, respectively. The RMSE of object-based matching in three directions are 4.9cm, 5.1cm and 6.3cm, respectively. Moreover, the RMSE of 3D line fitting is about 10 cm.

In the past 40 years, Taiwan has high degree of industrialization and rapid economic development, resulting in the increase of energy use by nearly 20 times and higher plant density and energy consumption rate per unit area. Therefore, the heat island effect in Taiwan has become an urgent and significant issue about living environment. Urban heat island is mainly due to the artificial impermeable pavement used to replace the original ground surface. The replacement has caused unbalanced temperature and made higher temperature at urban areas than the rural ones. With the development of spatial information technology, the remote sensing has advantages of high spectral rate, multi-scale images, multi-temporal and fast data acquisition. The application of remote sensing has been focused on urban heat island study nowadays. In this research, the remote sensing was used to analyze the land-use change and industrial development, and their impacts on the effect of urban heat island in Taichung. In this study, the thermal infrared band images generated by the Landsat satellite were used to estimate the surface temperature change. National land use data was applied to analyze land use change of Taichung. The study also discussed the correlation of land use and urban heat island. The results indicated that land surface radiation temperature increased 2 Kelvin degrees in average within 14 years. In addition, the temperature at central area is obviously higher than rural area. The area which premier affected by heat island is increased 13%, which can be recognized as artificial land and some other uses where located at prior Taichung City and western part. On the other hand, the area which has less influence from heat island is decrease 9%, which can be recognized as vegetation land and water where located at eastern part. In the industrial zones, according to the comparison analysis of power consumption, we have found the industry has higher consumption of energy, also with more contribution of urban heat island effect.