Recently, 12 CEODE projects were announced to have won the funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), after passing the evaluation and verification by an expert panel. Four of them will be financed by the General Program, seven by the Young Scientists Fund, and one by the International Academic Conference Program under NSFC, with a total funding up to 2.68 million yuan. In comparison to last year, the number of funded projects and the amount of funding both grow significantly, and this has strengthened the capability of the CEODE in fundamental research and S&T innovation.

Since its foundation in 2007, CEODE has been working hard to address the vital S&T demands of the country, conducting comprehensive research in applied earth observation as well as theories and vital technologies for a platform of Digital Earth. In the field of fundamental research, studies on underlying theories and applied technologies of vital significance have been carried out in priority disciplines including mechanisms and methods for detection of spatial earth information, high-performance geoscience computation and data assimilation, spatial model for the earth system, and digital geoscience system. During the period between November 2007 and August 2009, CEODE took charge of a total of 77 projects, securing as much as 158 million yuan of funding. The new research tasks include one project, two components and four sub-components of projects supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program), 12 projects funded by the National High-tech R&D Program (863 Program), four projects supported by the National Science and Technology Infrastructure Program, 10 projects financed by NSFC, three by the Large-scale Scientific Facility Program, and 42 projects funded by other sources.

Researchers conducting field experiments of remote sensing