Advances in Remote Sensing of Forestry
A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2012) | Viewed by 63596
Special Issue Editor
2. Global Observatory for Ecosystem Services, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Interests: remote sensing applications; spatial analysis; geographic information system; carbon measurement; global carbon cycle, climate change; forest carbon MRV; REDD+
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
In recent years there has been substantial progress by the research community developing ways to detect land cover change in tropical forests with remote sensing. What was initially a focus on measuring the conversion of tropical forests to non-forest, recent advances have made it possible to increase the variety of disturbances that can be detected for closed tropical forests to include logging and understory fires. Thus, there are now methods available to remotely detect a full range of disturbance intensities, from outright clearing to low levels of degradation, over large areas. Yet in spite of this progress two important next steps are needed. The first is to expand the measurement and monitoring capabilities to open forest systems, such as savanna woodlands, and to develop the means to measure trees outside of forests in agricultural landscapes. The second is to apply the technical means to the deployment of measurement, reporting and verification systems (MRV) to support carbon and climate change policy
Papers in the special issue will move on from the starting point of basic closed tropical forests monitoring and focus on the use of a variety of sensors and spatial resolutions to monitor the full suite of landscapes necessary to support the emerging REDD+ programs. This will include applications from a range of sensors and scales, including optical, microwave, and LiDAR. The purpose of this monitoring approach is to measure continuous fields of land cover and assign biomass and carbon attributes to these data sets. It will require monitoring deforestation, degradation, reforestation, agroforestry and trees outside of forests at the landscape level. Select papers will describe various technical approaches to forest carbon tracking, as well as information systems that can be developed to support a range of carbon monitoring needs.
Prof. David Skole
Guest Editor
Keywords
- tropical forests
- forest disturbance
- remote sensing
- REDD+
- Lidar
- reforestation
- agroforests
- savannas
- open forests