Landslides

mudslides

avalanches and other secondary geological disasters

triggered by“5·12”Wenchuan earthquake

have severely damaged vegetation in the region.Maoxian County is one of the earthquake disaster areas.Identifying changes of Maoxian County's vegetation coverage can provide a reference for vegetation restoration and is helpful to control soil erosion and geological disasters.Landsat-5TM remote sensing images for Maoxian County before and after the earthquake are selected as a data source and the normalized difference vegetation index and dimidiate pixel estimation model are used to analyze the vegetation coverage changes.Through the study of the data

the vegetation coverage is divided into high vegetation coverage

moderate vegetation coverage

low vegetation coverage and no vegetation coverage areas.Statistical analysis is made for the coverage change in each area.Results show that the earthquake has severely affected Maoxian County's vegetation coverage

with the high vegetation coverage area being most seriously affected and the low vegetation coverage area being least affected.The more seriously damaged area is mainly distributed in the slope of more than 40°。