China experienced some droughts in the last years that had a considerable economic impact. Satellite observations can be used for drought monitoring and prediction. Timely drought information may help in alleviating damage. The development of a drough monitoring and prediction tool is currently in progress.

The Hai river basin is one of the seven river basins that flows into the Bohai Sea. The Bohai sea and its surroundings experience ecological decline because of pollutant and reduced discharges from the main tributaries. In order to stop the ecological decline a project was started that aimed at establishing a real water savings program in the Hai basin through an ET reduction strategy, which will enhance the streamflow and freshwater discharges into the Bohai sea. To facilitate this process a remote sensing project was initiated to generate spatially distributed values of actual ET, biomass production and soil moisture.

The Tarim basin has several water management problems, such as occurrence of water shortage and water logged areas in the same region, soil salinity development, and significant variability in agricultural production. A project was started to establish and enforce water use quotas for each sub-basin in order to ensure adequate river flow in the middle and lower reaches of the Tarim river. In order to met this objective, consumptive use and beneficial evapotranspiration should be maximized and non-beneficial evapotranspiration and drainage should be minimized.