Remote Sensing Technologies for Soil Health Monitoring

Dear Colleagues,

Maintaining and restoring soil health has become an urgent global priority in the face of climate change, land degradation, and growing food security concerns. Though valuable, traditional soil health assessment methods are often labor-intensive and spatially limited. In contrast, integrating remote sensing (RS) technologies—enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI)—transforms soil health monitoring into a dynamic, scalable, and data-driven process.

This Special Issue invites contributions that explore innovative applications of RS for assessing soil health descriptors, supporting monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) frameworks and enabling precision land and soil management. We welcome studies utilizing the full spectrum of RS platforms—including spaceborne and airborne systems (e.g., UAVs and aerial campaigns)—and diverse sensor types (e.g., optical, radar, and thermal), along with synergistic approaches that integrate multiple data sources to enhance soil monitoring accuracy. In addition, we encourage research that addresses challenges in RS adoption, including accessibility and resolution limitations. Of particular interest are studies that demonstrate how earth observation data can support climate action through greenhouse gas monitoring, informed land-use planning and management aimed at a climate-neutral land-use sector, and the advancement of soil regeneration strategies.

Emphasis will be placed on works that combine AI-driven analysis, predictive modeling, and decision-support systems to build robust and coherent soil monitoring frameworks across local, regional, and global scales. Furthermore, we encourage contributions demonstrating how living labs and other multi-actor environments can facilitate the co-creation, testing, and validation of RS tools in real-world settings, ensuring that technological advances are locally relevant and contribute to climate-resilient and sustainable practices.

This Special Issue welcomes both original research and review papers. Ultimately, this Special Issue aims to showcase how RS technologies can empower stakeholders—from farmers to policymakers—with insights to regenerate degraded soils and support the transition toward sustainable and resilient land systems.

Dr. Ioannis Varvaris
Dr. Zampela Pittaki
Dr. Athanasios V. Argyriou
Dr. Nikolaos L. Tsakiridis
Dr. Nikiforos Samarinas
Dr. Michalakis Christoforou
Guest Editors

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• soil health
• remote sensing
• artificial intelligence (AI)
• living labs
• monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV)
• earth observation
• sustainable land management
• climate resilience
• soil regeneration
• data-driven decision making