Remote Sensing of Agro-Ecosystems

Dear Colleagues,

Agro-ecosystems are spatially coherent units of combined agricultural activities and ecological functionalities, which—moreover—demand particular attention in relation to their protection and sustainability.

Accurate and up-to-date spatial and diachronic information is essential for integrated agro-ecosystem management and remote sensing is irreplaceable for this purpose.

Today, the vast amounts of open-source, commercial, or privately produced image data, as well as tools for mining, processing, and interface available on the cloud, open up a new era in the proficient use of remote sensing in agro-ecosystems’ research.

This Special Issue invites manuscripts on the advancements in remote sensing towards a deeper scientific understanding of agro-ecosystems’ structures, functionalities, and risks.

Studies on their complexity decomposition, on their monitoring algorithms, and on the role of complementary data from field sensors are more than welcomed.

We expect that this Special Issue will demonstrate the significant added value of remote sensing of agro-ecosystems in this new era.

Indicative topics

• Crop-vegetation mapping using low-altitude image data;
• Integrated crop growth monitoring based on satellite imagery;
• Agro-ecosystem management using data from multiple sources;
• Image-based heterogeneity detection and interpretation;
• Machine learning for assessing ecological balance in agro-ecosystems;
• Object-based image analysis in agro-ecosystem change detection;
• Modeling agricultural sustainability with fractal geometry;
• Pattern analysis in agro-ecosystems using head/tail breaks;
• Use of imagery and field sensors in biological and organic agriculture;
• Use of drones for best practice introduction and monitoring;
• Exploitation of cloud platforms for agro-environmental protection;
• Advances of hyperspectral imaging for soil properties’ mapping;
• Spectral indices for crop health assessment and yield prediction;
• Image-oriented fertilization for precision agriculture applications.

Dr. Christos Karydas
Dr. Vassilis George Aschonitis
Dr. Lachezar Filchev
Dr. Goran Dimic
Prof. Dr. Bin Jiang
Dr. Panos Panagos
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.