Applications of Remote Sensing for Resources Conservation

A special issue of Earth (ISSN 2673-4834).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2022) | Viewed by 16352

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
GIS Research Center, Feng Chia University, Taichung City 40874, Taiwan
Interests: GIS; remote sensing; UAV; land management; disasters prevention and protection information
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Istituto di Geologia Ambientale e Geoingegneria, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 20131 Milano, Italy
Interests: geology of volcanic areas; field survey; volcano-tectonic; volcanic geomorphology; volcanology; neotectonics; paleoseismology; volcaniclastic deposits; volcano lateral collapses; volcanic hazard assessment; GIS; geothermal resources
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

An increasing number of innovations on remote sensing applications have emerged in recent years thanks to ever-growing new technologies. With the global impacts of climate change, the topics of resource conservation in daily life, production activities, and ecological issues are actively discussed. Combinations of remote sensing techniques with the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and UAV observations make resource conservation applications more dynamic. Multilateral remote sensing techniques support resource conservation data analysis, including land use and land cover analysis, natural environment monitoring, agricultural resource surveys, and 3-dimensional environment simulations. 

The key objective of this Special Issue is to collect the latest studies on remote sensing in resource conservation. Submitted manuscripts should focus on innovative applications in these areas. The following topics are some examples of the issues we expect manuscripts to deal with:

  • Remote sensing information
  • Climate change
  • Ocean debris monitoring
  • Hydrology and water source
  • 3-dimensional remote sensing and Earth surface modeling
  • Disaster management and emergency plans
  • Resource conservation
  • Flood prediction
  • Forest and agricultural management
  • Big data in remote sensing
  • Coastal mapping
  • AI in remote sensing
  • VR/AR reality
  • Internet of Things (IoT)

This Special Issue on “Applications of Remote Sensing for Resources Conservation” is jointly organized between the journals of Remote Sensing and Earth. Contributors are required to check the website below and follow the specific instructions for authors:
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/instructions
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/earth/instructions

Dr. Tien Yin Chou
Dr. Gianluca Groppelli
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 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.

Keywords

  • Climate change
  • Resource conservation
  • Big data in remote sensing
  • VR/AR reality
  • Environmental protection

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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19 pages, 5661 KiB  
Article
Comparative Assessment of UAV and Sentinel-2 NDVI and GNDVI for Preliminary Diagnosis of Habitat Conditions in Burunge Wildlife Management Area, Tanzania
by Lazaro J. Mangewa, Patrick A. Ndakidemi, Richard D. Alward, Hamza K. Kija, John K. Bukombe, Emmanuel R. Nasolwa and Linus K. Munishi
Earth 2022, 3(3), 769-787; https://doi.org/10.3390/earth3030044 - 28 Jun 2022
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 4746
Abstract
Habitat condition is a vital ecological attribute in wildlife conservation and management in protected areas, including the Burunge wildlife management areas in Tanzania. Traditional techniques, including satellite remote sensing and ground-based techniques used to assess habitat condition, have limitations in terms of costs [...] Read more.
Habitat condition is a vital ecological attribute in wildlife conservation and management in protected areas, including the Burunge wildlife management areas in Tanzania. Traditional techniques, including satellite remote sensing and ground-based techniques used to assess habitat condition, have limitations in terms of costs and low resolution of satellite platforms. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Green NDVI (GNDVI) have potential for assessing habitat condition, e.g., forage quantity and quality, vegetation cover and degradation, soil erosion and salinization, fire, and pollution of vegetation cover. We, therefore, examined how the recently emerged Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platform and the traditional Sentinel-2 differs in indications of habitat condition using NDVI and GNDVI. We assigned 13 survey plots to random locations in the major land cover types: three survey plots in grasslands, shrublands, and woodlands, and two in riverine and mosaics cover types. We used a UAV-mounted, multi-spectral sensor and obtained Sentinel-2 imagery between February and March 2020. We categorized NDVI and GNDVI values into habitat condition classes (very good, good, poor, and very poor). We analyzed data using descriptive statistics and linear regression model in R-software. The results revealed higher sensitivity and ability of UAV to provide the necessary preliminary diagnostic indications of habitat condition. The UAV-based NDVI and GNDVI maps showed more details of all classes of habitat conditions than the Sentinel-2 maps. The linear regressions results showed strong positive correlations between the two platforms (p < 0.001). The differences were attributed primarily to spatial resolution and minor atmospheric effects. We recommend further studies to test other vegetation indices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Remote Sensing for Resources Conservation)
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20 pages, 7240 KiB  
Article
The Spatiotemporal Characteristics and Interactions between Urban Expansion and Tidal Flat Dynamics: A Case Study of Three Highly Urbanized Coastal Counties in the Southeastern United States
by Chao Xu and Weibo Liu
Earth 2022, 3(2), 557-576; https://doi.org/10.3390/earth3020033 - 16 Apr 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3835
Abstract
Tidal flats are widely recognized as sentinels of coastal environment change, and are also the guardians for beachfront communities. As a result of urban expansion, tidal flats have increasingly received environmental pressures and the surrounding ecosystem has been functionally downgraded. However, the existing [...] Read more.
Tidal flats are widely recognized as sentinels of coastal environment change, and are also the guardians for beachfront communities. As a result of urban expansion, tidal flats have increasingly received environmental pressures and the surrounding ecosystem has been functionally downgraded. However, the existing studies could not provide an effective method to identify and quantify the interactions between urban areas and tidal flats, which is essential work particularly for the coastal preservations in the United States. Aiming at this environmental crisis, we proposed an approach which quantifies the change patterns from a spatiotemporal perspective. To justify the rationality and feasibility of this approach, this study selected three highly urbanized coastal counties in the southeastern United States as the study area. We analyzed the annual dynamics during 1985~2015, and the generated spatiotemporal regularities were used to identify and quantify the correlations between urban expansion and tidal flat dynamics. This study not only justified that the coastal urban expansion could considerably damage the environment of tidal flats, but also verified an effective approach to investigate the correlations between urban expansion and tidal flat loss on a large spatiotemporal scale. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Remote Sensing for Resources Conservation)
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20 pages, 5267 KiB  
Article
Monitoring Subaquatic Vegetation Using Sentinel-2 Imagery in Gallocanta Lake (Aragón, Spain)
by Juan Soria, Miriam Ruiz and Samuel Morales
Earth 2022, 3(1), 363-382; https://doi.org/10.3390/earth3010022 - 23 Feb 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2512
Abstract
Remote sensing allows the study of aquatic vegetation cover in shallow lakes from the different spectral responses of the water as the vegetation grows from the bottom toward the surface. In the case of Gallocanta Lake, its seasonality and shallow depth (less than [...] Read more.
Remote sensing allows the study of aquatic vegetation cover in shallow lakes from the different spectral responses of the water as the vegetation grows from the bottom toward the surface. In the case of Gallocanta Lake, its seasonality and shallow depth (less than 2 m) allow us to appreciate the variations in the aquatic vegetation with the apparent color. Six common vegetation indices were tested, and the one with the best response was the so-called NDI45, which uses the normalized ratio between the far red (705 nm) and red (665 nm) bands. Our aims are to show the variations in the surface area covered by vegetation at the bottom of the lagoon, its growth and disappearance when drying occurs, and recolonization in a flooding period. The degree of cover reaches 90% at the most favorable times of the year, generally in summer and coinciding with flooding of the lake. The studied period shows how this method can be used for lacustrine habitat detection and highlights the need for field vegetation inventories in future works, which will allow the spectral measurements to be related to the species present. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Remote Sensing for Resources Conservation)
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Review

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15 pages, 1446 KiB  
Review
Current Trends and Issues in Applications of Remote Sensing in Coastal and Marine Conservation
by Egidijus Jurkus, Ramūnas Povilanskas, Artūras Razinkovas-Baziukas and Julius Taminskas
Earth 2022, 3(1), 433-447; https://doi.org/10.3390/earth3010026 - 11 Mar 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3516
Abstract
The background of this feature article is a necessity to systematize a vast array of issues pertinent to the latest applications of remote sensing in coastal and marine conservation. Hence the purpose of this study: stocktaking of cutting-edge research articles in this field [...] Read more.
The background of this feature article is a necessity to systematize a vast array of issues pertinent to the latest applications of remote sensing in coastal and marine conservation. Hence the purpose of this study: stocktaking of cutting-edge research articles in this field and eliciting the essential trends and issues shaping the knowledge and future research and technical development perspectives in coastal and marine nature conservation, which is pivotal for meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals till 2030. A hierarchical cluster analysis was undertaken with the KH Coder 3.0 tool to elicit topical co-occurrence networks for thematic words in academic papers from 2015 to 2021 on the topic quarried from Scholar Google. The article’s main findings are the elicited four main trending themes in applications of remote sensing in coastal and marine conservation: (1) Remote Sensing-Based Classification and Modelling; (2) Conservation of Tropical Coastal and Marine Habitats; (3) Mapping of Habitats and Species Distribution; (4) Ecosystem and Biodiversity Conservation and Resource Management. The main conclusion of the article is that habitat vulnerability is a key factor to take into consideration for the future hybrid applications of remote sensing and “citizen science” inputs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Remote Sensing for Resources Conservation)
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