On March 28, 2025, a moment magnitude (Mw) 7.8 earthquake struck the Mandalay region of Myanmar, rupturing about 510 km of the Sagaing Fault. The southern segment propagated at supershear speed over~450 km, making it one of the longest continental supershear ruptures ever observed. Using satellite remote sensing integrated with seismic observations, an international research team led by Professor MENG Lingsen from the University of California, Los Angeles and Professor ZHANG Yunjun from the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS), successfully reconstructed the rupture process and mapped earthquake damage in unprecedented detail. The results were published in Science on October 30, 2025, and selected as a cover article.

A research team led by Prof. LIU Liangyun from the Aerospace Information Research Institute with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS) has produced the first comprehensive, high-resolution map of global city and town boundaries, providing an unprecedented view of how urban boundaries have expanded and transformed over the past two decades. The new dataset—derived from 30-meter-resolution observations—fills a long-standing gap in global urban studies and provides planners and scientists with a powerful tool for examining sustainable development challenges.

Published in Chinese Geographical Science​, the research is led by Prof. WU Bingfang from the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS). By integrating 1-km evapotranspiration data, CHIRPS rainfall records and GRACE satellite gravimetry, the team quantified how irrigation expansion and planned hydropower schemes interact with environmental flow needs across the 1.39 million km² basin between 2003 and 2019.

A new study led by Professor LU Shanlong from the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS), has published in Communications Earth & Environment, reveals that since 2019, when the previously isolated Zonag-Yanhu drainage basin became connected to the headwaters of the Yangtze River, both hydrological and ecological processes within the basin have undergone rapid transformation.

A research team led by Prof. NIE Sheng at the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS), has developed a new bathymetric mapping framework that integrates indirect inversion of ICESat-2 satellite LiDAR data with multi-source remote sensing observations. The framework, detailed in Remote Sensing of Environment combines wave-based indirect bathymetry, multi-source feature fusion, and a temporal sample-transfer strategy to achieve high-accuracy, wide-coverage mapping in optically complex shallow waters.

A research team from the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS), in collaboration with the Center for Advanced Studies in Earth Sciences and Biodiversity (CADIC-CONICET), Argentina, has revealed major blind spots in current Antarctic vegetation mapping caused by the poor detectability of dark-colored lichens.