Desertification monitoring for Hainan diggings based on geostatistical texture

There is great desertification in the east of Hainan Island of China due to over-mining of ilmenites. The effective methods to combat desertification are monitoring the change of land with remote sensing, licensing the rights of mining ilmenites rationally, and organizing the moderate reclaim. Based on the difference of sandy land types on the spatial constructions, geostatistical texture was used to monitor desertification, and the discrimination degree of sample selection could be increased by using variogram texture to increase the difference of different kinds of sandy land. The results show that the maximum likelihood classification based on variogram texture and spectral bands can perfectly define the grades of beach sandy land and inner desertification, and the maximal classification precision comes up to 92.4%, which proves that geostatistical texture is effective in the application of desertification monitoring.