Abstract:

Based on the theory of remote sensing on water, we have made a quantitative analysis of the total salinity of Zhabuye salt lake in Tibet, which has a high concentration of salt and complex components, by using method of 3-D salt index, principal components method, correlation analysis, and etc. We have drawn three main conclusions as follows: First, it is discovered that Zhabuye salt lake has many salinity centers . The total salinity in northern part of  the lake is higher than those values in southern part. The water in southern part has an obvious degeneration trend Second, we established the 3D-index of bitter water that has high salinity and complicated composition. The index is NS（TM3/TM7,TM3/TM4,TM3/TM5）. Third,based on 3D-index about bitter water , we have found the principal components method is perfect in distincting of salt : PCA（TM（3/7,3/4,3/5））. According to this method , we can get three components of image data, the first component (PC1) has the strongest relation with the salinity.We have built a RS model of highly salty and complicatedly componented bitter water based on our research: Y= aX+b. This research is significant of making a survey of the salt lake in  western China.

Key words: Zabuye salt lake, total salinity, remote sensing, quantitative analysis, Tibet