In February this year, construction machinery was operating on cultivated land in Daji Street, Caidian District, Wuhan. It was estimated that the width of the excavated ditch was suspected to exceed 1 meter. Wuhan Municipal Bureau of Natural Resources and Urban-Rural Construction obtained this information immediately, and the municipal and district levels resolutely suspended the project and continued to conduct follow-up monitoring on it.

This rapid response benefits from the "Sky-Earth-Net" Cultivated Land Protection Monitoring and Early Warning System developed by the Bureau. The system automatically identifies suspected illegal occupation of cultivated land, issues early warning information to grid managers at the district, street and village levels, and sends SMS reminders. Street and village grid managers rush to the scene for on-site verification using the "Han Geng Yun" WeChat applet supporting the system, quickly identify illegal land use, and achieve the goal of early detection and early prevention.

A reporter from Jimu News learned from the Bureau that the system was officially put into operation in January 2025, marking a solid step for Wuhan in building a new pattern of cultivated land protection featuring "strong protection, intensive efficiency and strict supervision". According to reports, the system innovatively applies the latest technologies such as the "Wuhan-1" satellite, iron tower video cameras, UAVs and AI intelligent recognition to create an integrated "Sky-Earth-Net" monitoring system that enables "observation from the sky, auxiliary inspection, real-time monitoring and on-site patrol". This has realized a fundamental transformation in cultivated land protection work from passive rectification to active detection and then to source control.

The person in charge of Wuhan Municipal Information Center of Natural Resources and Planning told Jimu News that the core of the "Sky-Earth-Net" system lies in the complementarity and coordinated operation of multi-source data. Among them:

"Sky" refers to the "Wuhan-1" satellite, the first optical remote sensing satellite customized for a city in China. Led by Academician Gong Jianya of Wuhan University, it has 0.5-meter resolution panchromatic imaging and 10-meter resolution hyperspectral imaging capabilities. By comparing two phases of images, it can clearly and accurately detect changes in cultivated land plots, realizing comprehensive monitoring of cultivated land in blind areas of video supervision.

"Earth" relies on the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) airports deployed under the Urban Smart Eye System. It can conduct remote control and automatic patrol in key areas, and carry out targeted inspections and accurate evidence collection for suspected illegal acts within a 4-kilometer range.

"Ground" refers to iron tower video monitoring. Relying on 595 deployed iron tower video cameras, it conducts 24-hour monitoring of changes in cultivated land across the city.

"Net" is a four-level grid manager system established at the "municipal-district-street-village" levels, which conducts on-site verification, on-site prevention and reports rectification for the map spots issued by the early warning system.

The system is capable of second-level early warnings and closed-loop disposal. On January 24 this year, the "Wuhan Sky-Earth-Net Cultivated Land Protection Monitoring and Early Warning System" issued an early warning: a map spot suspected of occupying permanent basic farmland to build a iron-sheet house was found in Shuangliu Street, Xinzhou District. Later, grid managers confirmed through on-site verification that it was an illegally constructed facility farm house. The local authorities immediately urged rectification and relocation, and organized land re-cultivation at the original site.

The system's strong real-time early warning capability stems from the AI-driven rapid early warning and efficient closed-loop disposal. By establishing a sample database of more than 200,000 videos and images of cultivated land changes, and integrating AI algorithms such as deep learning, it realizes "real-time detection and second-level early warning" for more than 20 types of targets such as illegal construction and unauthorized occupation within the electronic fence of cultivated land. After an early warning is issued, the cloud intelligent computing platform connects multiple levels of Wuhan (municipal, district, street and village), and links multiple departments including cultivated land protection, law enforcement and investigation. Information is directly sent to the grid managers' "Han Geng Yun" WeChat applet and mobile phone SMS, triggering a full-process closed-loop management of "monitoring-early warning-disposal-feedback-supervision".

Wuhan Municipal Bureau of Natural Resources and Urban-Rural Construction stated that in the next step, it will continue to strengthen key technology research, improve the level of monitoring intelligence and early warning accuracy, explore the expansion from single-factor cultivated land monitoring to comprehensive multi-factor supervision covering natural resources survey and monitoring, law enforcement and supervision, and comprehensive land improvement, so as to provide stronger scientific and technological support for guarding the red line of cultivated land protection.