From July 14 to 18, 2025, the 2025 Dragon 6 Symposium was successfully held in Qingdao, China. The symposium aimed to summarize the first-year achievements of the Dragon Programme VI and strengthen academic exchange and cooperation between China and Europe in the field of Earth observation. The event attracted more than 300 experts and scholars from research institutes and universities across China and Europe. Associate Professor Yin Qiang, together with her team members from the Remote Sensing Technology Institute (RS-Ti) at Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT), participated in the symposium.
The joint project “Microwave and Optical Remote Sensing of Salt Lakes from Space”, co-investigated by BUCT and the University of Strasbourg, is one of the 43 selected Earth observation projects under the Dragon Programme (due to the conference date). Associate Professor Yin Qiang serves as the Chinese PI(Project Investigator), and Professor Hervé Yesou from the University of Strasbourg serves as the European PI. Participating institutions also include the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS). The Chinese Co-Principal Investigators include Professor Hong Wen (AIRCAS) and Associate Professor Ma Fei (BUCT). The team will jointly utilize optical and microwave remote sensing data to conduct refined land-cover classification and ecological environment monitoring of salt lake regions in China and France, publish high-impact academic papers, and promote academic exchange among young scholars and graduate students.
Group Photo of Chinese and European Team Members
As the Chinese PI, Yin Qiang delivered a oral presentation at the symposium, providing a systematic overview of the project’s objectives, technical approach, and recent research progress, along with preliminary results on land-cover classification and ecological monitoring in salt lake regions.
Oral Presentation on the Project Report
Graduate students from the team actively participated in the Young Scientists Poster Session, showcasing their research advances in optical-microwave data fusion, salt lake feature extraction, and time-series change analysis. During the event, Chinese and European collaborators also engaged in in-depth discussions on technical issues and future research plans, laying a solid foundation for subsequent joint research and publications.
Young Scientists Poster Exhibition
Launched jointly by China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2004, the Dragon Programme is a flagship international cooperation initiative in Earth observation. The programme aims to bring together leading remote sensing experts from China and Europe to promote cooperative research on the application of Earth observation data in agriculture, forestry, water resources, disasters, mapping, atmosphere, oceans, and related fields. Each phase lasts four years, and Phase I-V have been successfully completed, with Phase VI officially kicked off in June 2024. In fact, members of RS-Ti have served as Chinese Co-PIs for Dragon Programme projects in polarimetric interferometry and as lecturers for the advanced training course on land remote sensing since 2016. RS-Ti has achieved remarkable progress in remote sensing data processing and applications, making significant contributions to the development of the “Earth Sciences” discipline at BUCT.