Wang et al. (2025) Evaluation of Aircraft Cloud Seeding for Ecological Restoration in the Shiyang River Basin Using Remote Sensing

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Identification

• Journal: Atmosphere
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-11-27
• Authors: Wei Wang, Mei Zhang, Lin Ma
• DOI: 10.3390/atmos16121344

Research Groups

The specific research groups, labs, or departments involved are not explicitly stated in the provided text.

Short Summary

This study quantitatively evaluates the effectiveness of aircraft-based cloud seeding in the Shiyang River Basin, China, demonstrating a significant increase in precipitation and subsequent marked ecological restoration through enhanced vegetation coverage.

Objective

• To evaluate the effectiveness of aircraft-based cloud seeding for enhancing rainfall and its subsequent impact on ecological restoration in the Shiyang River Basin.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Shiyang River Basin, China.
• Temporal Scale: 2000–2024 for satellite imagery analysis; cloud seeding implementation evaluated since 2010.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Regional historical regression, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) retrieval, fraction of vegetation cover (FVC) calculation, spectral mixture analysis.
• Data sources: Ground-based precipitation observations, Landsat satellite remote sensing imagery.

Main Results

• Aircraft-based cloud seeding resulted in an average relative precipitation increase of 20.8% (p < 0.1%) in the operational area.
• Following the commencement of rainfall enhancement in 2010, NDVI and FVC values within the study area showed a marked increase.
• The percentage of regions with low vegetation coverage declined from 30.36% to 25.21%.
• The percentage of regions classified as improved or slightly improved increased significantly from 14.20% (before 2010) to 36.24% (after 2010).
• The vegetation ecosystem in the Shiyang River Basin transitioned from localized enhancement to overall improvement and reduced degradation.

Contributions

• Develops a novel application of cloud-seeding technology specifically for ecological recovery.
• Provides one of the first quantitative assessments of aircraft-based cloud seeding in inland river basins of China.
• Establishes a direct link between meteorological intervention (cloud seeding) and measurable ecological restoration outcomes.

Funding

The provided text does not contain information regarding specific funding projects, programs, or reference codes.

Citation

@article{Wang2025Evaluation,
  author = {Wang, Wei and Zhang, Mei and Ma, Lin},
  title = {Evaluation of Aircraft Cloud Seeding for Ecological Restoration in the Shiyang River Basin Using Remote Sensing},
  journal = {Atmosphere},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.3390/atmos16121344},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos16121344}
}