Spatio-Temporal Monitoring of Urban–Rural Land Use and Ecological Environment

Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, driven by the rapid growth of the population, urbanization, and economic development, the continuous increase in human activities has been threatening the environmental quality and health of ecosystems, affecting the prospect of sustainable development. As the primary response to human activities, land use/cover change (LUCC) reflects the interaction of natural, socioeconomical, and political indicators concerning regional ecological environments, and can be used to assess, monitor, and even predict ecological risks and environmental issues. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the link between LUCC and the ecological environment towards a sustainable development of the terrestrial ecosystem for both researchers and policy makers worldwide, based on initiatives such as monitoring LUCC in different scenarios and comprehensively reflecting the possible adverse effects on the ecological environment.

Both urban and rural spaces possess living and production properties people need, which is regarded as the foundation of sustainable development for human society. To fully understand and find solutions to current and future ecological and environmental problems created by urban–rural developments, it has become an important subject to identify sets of structural and functional indicators suited to detecting ecological environment changes, to understand and quantify the characteristics of urban–rural ecological risks and environmental issues under anthropogenic pressures, and the interaction between the LUCC and ecological environment. With the rapid development of GIS (geographic information system) and RS (remote sensing) technologies and the broad application of the theories and methods of dynamic spatial modelling and simulation, the spatio-temporal monitoring of urban–rural ecological environments is an important research frontier worthy of in-depth study.

Overall, this Special Issue aims to invite manuscript submissions concerning urban–rural ecological environments. The listed keywords suggest just a few of the many possible topics of interest.

Dr. Jiaxing Cui
Prof. Dr. Jing Luo
Dr. Ying Jing
Dr. Liqun Sun
Guest Editors

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