Studies on models of ecological capital assessment and measurement based on remote sensing technology in inner Mongolia

Models and methods of ecological capital assessment based on remote sensing (RS) technologies are introduced in this paper, including the selection of RS measurement indexes, models of vegetation biomass measurement, retrieval methods for net primary production and vegetation coverage. On this basis, the present ecological capital gross in typical research area of Inner Mongolia were assessed and compared according to ecological capital assessment models with the help of multi‐scale remote sensing observation data such as IKONOS, ETM+ and MODIS. The results indicate that the largest average ratio to the total ecological capital is farmland (45%), the second is forest (24%), the third is grassland (23%), and the smallest is shrubland (8%). Therefore, it can be proved that an ecological capital assessment model based on RS methods was reasonable.