Mapping and Modeling Forests Using Geospatial Technologies

Dear Colleagues,

Forests, which cover nearly a third of the Earth’s terrestrial surface, are among the most complex and vital ecosystems. They provide critical ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, climate regulation, and biodiversity conservation. However, growing anthropogenic pressures and disturbances threaten these services, making it imperative to improve our ability to monitor and understand changes in forest ecosystems. Geospatial technologies, including remote sensing and GIS, offer powerful tools to map and model forests, providing valuable insights into forest structure, health, services, and dynamics. These technologies also contribute significantly to understanding the roles that forests play in mitigating climate change.

This Special Issue invites contributions that leverage geospatial technologies to map and model forest ecosystems. We encourage studies that employ multi-source (e.g., multispectral, hyperspectral, thermal, microwave, LiDAR), multi-scale, and multi-temporal approaches to address key challenges in forest science. We also welcome research exploring smart, consumer-grade, and low-cost geospatial solutions to make forest monitoring more accessible.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Forest inventories and vegetation parameter mapping;
• Detection and monitoring of biotic and abiotic disturbances;
• Forest cover change and dynamics analysis;
• Phenological trends and vegetation dynamics;
• Carbon and ecohydrology modeling in forest ecosystems;
• Long-term forest monitoring techniques.
• We invite researchers and practitioners to submit innovative studies that advance our understanding of forest ecosystems through the application of cutting-edge geospatial technologies.

Dr. Yaoliang Chen
Dr. Lei Zhao
Prof. Dr. Dengsheng Lu
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-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2600 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.