Announcements

Female scholars have contributed enormously to shaping the advances in the field of land science, and they are continuing to develop this emerging discipline. We created this award in order to encourage female scholars to continue to advance this field and to recognize those female scholars who have made noteworthy contributions to it, as we acknowledge that scientific progress is a collaborative and inclusive effort that necessitates gender equality and equity in access to publishing across the Global North and South.

We consider it a great honour to hold this conversation about women in the field of land science with Prof. Dr. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey, who is one of the winners of the Land 2022 Influential Female Research in Land System Science award.

The 2022 citation metrics have been released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), and we’re pleased to announce the following results for MDPI journals:

We are thrilled to announce that 90% of our ranked MDPI journals, specifically 86 out of 96 (captured in the table below), are performing above average in Q1 or Q2. This year, Clarivate has expanded its Impact Factor (IF) awards to include journals in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), providing greater transparency for the full set of journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection. As a result, 111 of MDPI journals have received their first IF in 2023, with 37 journals surpassing an IF of 3.0. In total, 208 MDPI journals have been honored with an IF.

Clarivate explains that by "expanding the coverage but holding to highly selective standards, the [Impact Factor] is now a reliable indicator of trustworthiness, as well as a measure of scholarly impact, at the journal level."

Please visit our blog post where we discuss the release of the latest citation metrics with our Indexing Manager, Dr. Constanze Schelhorn, to find out what's different this time around and how to make use of different metrics available.

Note: The Journal of Personalized Medicine's Impact Factor was omitted in the original release and will be assigned separately. Please find the data on the journal webpage in due course.

Source: 2022 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ^TM (Clarivate, 2023)

The journal Land (ISSN: 2073-445X) is recruiting Reviewer Board Members. The main responsibility of the new members of the Reviewer Board is to provide timely, high-quality reports on submitted manuscripts. To qualify as a reviewer, applicants must have published approximately eight papers related to land science in the last 5 years and hold a Ph.D. degree. More information on reviewer responsibilities is available at https://www.mdpi.com/reviewers.

The Reviewer Board consists of experienced researchers whose main responsibility is regularly and actively supporting journals by providing high-quality, rigorous, and transparent review reports for submitted manuscripts within their area of expertise. The initial term is 1 year, which can be renewed or terminated. Membership involves the same responsibilities and benefits as regular reviewers, with the addition of the following:

• Reviewer Board Members (RBMs) must review a minimum of six manuscripts per year. Should the reviewer be unable to provide a report when invited, they are expected to suggest potential alternative reviewers (the proposed candidates must meet the reviewers’ requirements (https://www.mdpi.com/reviewers#_bookmark2));
• RBMs have the opportunity to publish one paper per year with a discount of CHF 200 (once accepted for publication after peer review);
• RBMs are entitled to receive an RB certificate;
• RBMs are announced on the journal website;
• Active RBMs may be promoted to the Topical Advisory Panel (subject to approval by the Editor-in-Chief).

If you are interested in this role or have any recommendations, please email us at land@mdpi.com. We hope to hear from you soon.

For more information about Land, please visit the website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land.

Land (ISSN: 2073-445X) is currently recruiting prestigious scholars from around the world to join our Editorial Board for the following 13 Sections:

• “Land Systems and Global Change”;
• “Landscape Ecology”;
• “Soil–Sediment–Water Systems”;
• “Land Socio-Economic and Political Issues”;
• “Urban Contexts and Urban–Rural Interactions”;
• “Land–Climate Interactions”;
• “Landscape Archaeology”;
• “Land, Biodiversity, and Human Wellbeing”;
• “Land Environmental and Policy Impact Assessment”;
• “Land Innovations—Data and Machine Learning”;
• “Water, Energy, Land and Food (WELF) Nexus”;
• “Land—Observation and Monitoring”;
• “Land Planning and Architecture”.
  

Land is an international and cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal of land system science, landscape, soil–sediment–water systems, urban study, land–climate interactions, water–energy–land–food (WELF) nexus, biodiversity research and health nexus, land modeling and data processing, ecosystem services, and multifunctionality and sustainability, etc., published monthly online by MDPI. The International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE), European Land-use Institute (ELI), Landscape Institute (LI) and Urban Land Institute (ULI) are affiliated with Land, and their members receive a discount on the Article Processing Charge.

The main responsibilities of Editorial Board Members are as follows:

• Pre-screening and taking decisions on new submissions related to their research interests;
• Setting up at least one Special Issue during their term on a topic related to their research interests (or supervising Special Issues related to their research field);
• Helping to attract suitable expert authors and inviting young scholars to join the topical advisory panel;
• Providing input or feedback regarding journal policies;
• Helping to promote the journal among their peers or at conferences;
• Attending Board meetings to suggest journal development strategies;
• Reviewing manuscripts.
  

The benefits of becoming an Editorial Board Member include the following:

• The opportunity to publish one paper, free of charge, per year in Land, as well as receiving certain discounts for papers invited from your scientific network;
• A certificate recognizing you as an Editorial Board Member of Land;
• Land may offer sponsorship for conferences organized by you;
• Land may offer travel grants of CHF 300–500 per year for conferences that you attend or organize.

To apply for this position (in one of our Sections), recommend potential candidates, or request further information, please contact the Land Editorial Office (land@mdpi.com) with the following two files attached:

• A full academic CV;
• A short cover letter that details your interest and enthusiasm for the position.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Land Editorial Office

We are pleased to inform you that Land (ISSN: 2073-445X) has received an updated CiteScore of 3.7, an increase of 15.6% compared with the 2021 metric. The 2022 CiteScore™ was released recently, making an assessment of the scientific influence of journals in the 2019 to 2022 period.

For more journal statistics, please visit https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land/stats.

Excellent performance is inseparable from the support and dedication of all journal editors, reviewers, authors, and readers. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have contributed to the journal.

A message from Prof. Rui Alexandre Castanho, the webinar chair:

Throughout the webinar, we will have the opportunity to hear from leading experts in their fields, engage in productive discussions, and participate in hands-on workshops and activities. We aim to foster new partnerships through collaboration and innovation, providing a platform where a range of ideas can be shared.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have revolutionized remote sensing for land use and land cover (LULC) mapping and landscape analysis. The ability to capture high-resolution aerial imagery and create 3D landscape models has allowed for more accurate and detailed mapping of LULC patterns, changes, and trends over time.

Furthermore, using UAVs for citizen science initiatives has enabled communities to participate in monitoring and managing their local environments. This approach allows for a more collaborative and inclusive approach to environmental management and can help to build community awareness and engagement in environmental issues.

UAVs have also been used for mapping vegetation, soil erosion, and water quality monitoring. These applications have provided researchers and managers with new tools to better understand and manage natural resources. UAVs can collect data quickly and at a high resolution, allowing for more detailed analysis of small-scale features such as vegetation canopy cover, plant height, and soil erosion patterns.

Using UAVs for remote sensing and citizen science initiatives has opened up new opportunities for more efficient and effective environmental monitoring and management. As technology continues to improve, we can expect to see even more innovative applications of UAVs in environmental research and management.

At this webinar, we hope you will gain new insights, make valuable connections, and leave feeling inspired and motivated to drive positive change in your respective fields.

Date: 13 July 2023 at 5:00 p.m. CEST | 11:00 a.m. EDT | 11:00 p.m. CST Asia
Webinar ID: 870 9667 3555

Register now for free!

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information on how to join the webinar. Registrations with academic institutional email addresses will be prioritized.

Unable to attend? Register as normal to be notified when the recording is available to watch.

Webinar Chair and Keynote Speakers

• Rui Alexandre Castanho, Department of Management, WSB University, Dabrowa Górnicza, Poland;
• Ana Hernando, Departamento de Ingeniería y Gestión Forestal y Ambiental Department of Forestry and Environmental Engineering and Management, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain;
• Luís Quinta-Nova, Agrarian Higher School, Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco, Castelo Branco, Portugal.

Relevant Topic:

“Advances in Earth Observation and Geosciences”
Edited by: Prof. Dr. Diego González-Aguilera and Dr. Pablo Rodríguez-Gonzálvez
Abstract submission deadline: 31 December 2023

Relevant Special Issues:

"Land-Use Planning in Borderlands and Ultra-Peripheral Regions"
Edited by: Dr. Rui Alexandre Castanho, Dr. José Manuel Naranjo Gómez, Prof. Dr. José Martín Gallardo, Dr. José Cabezas Fernández and Prof. Dr. Luís Quinta-Nova

"Planning Peripheral and Ultra-Peripheral Infrastructures"
Edited by: Prof. Dr. Rui Alexandre Castanho, Prof. Dr. Ana Vulevic, Prof. Dr. Gualter Couto and Prof. Dr. José Manuel Naranjo Gómez

"Sustainability in Tourism Activities and the Low-Density and Peripheral Territories"
Edited by: Prof. Dr. Rui Alexandre Castanho and Prof. Dr. Gualter Couto

"Remote Sensing Applications in Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF)"
Edited by: Dr. Ali Nadir Arslan, Prof. Dr. Katarzyna Dabrowska-Zielinska and Dr. Jose Manuel Álvarez-Martínez

"Resilient UAV Autonomy and Remote Sensing"
Edited by: Dr. Chi Chen, Dr. San Jiang, Dr. Xijiang Chen, Dr. Mao Tian, Dr. Jianping Li and Dr. Jian Zhou

"Advances on Land Cover/Land Use Ontologies for Innovative Production/Utilization of Land Information"
Edited by: Dr. Antonio Di Gregorio, Dr. Matieu Henry, Chris T. Hill, Prof. John Latham, Prof. Dr. Mohammed Abed Hossain, Dr. Khalid Mahmood and Dr. Foster Mensah

Relevant feature paper:

“The Land Use Mapping Techniques (Including the Areas Used by Pedestrians) Based on Low-Level Aerial Imagery”
by Maciej Smaczyński, Beata Medyńska-Gulij and Łukasz Halik
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2020, 9(12), 754; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi9120754

We are pleased to announce the winner of the Land 2022 Influential Female Research in Land System Science Award—Prof. Dr. Harini Nagendra.

Name: Prof. Dr. Harini Nagendra
Affiliation: Azim Premji University, India
Research interests: urban ecology and sustainability; land change science; remote sensing for ecology and conservation

We acknowledge that scientific progress is a collaborative and inclusive effort that necessitates gender equality and equity in access to publishing across the Global North and South. This award aims to encourage female scholars to continue to advance the field of land science, and we will continue to reward those female scholars who have made noteworthy contributions to it. We wish them every success in their careers.

We hope you enjoy the interview.

1. Can you provide a brief summary of your current research activities?

I'm the director of the Research Centre at the Azim Premji University in Bangalore in India, which is equivalent to a dean or coordinator of research activities at the university. And I also directly lead the Center for Climate Change and Sustainability at the university, which means that we are a larger center looking at issues of climate change and sustainability that are largely affecting India, but also affecting the world.

As part of this, my own research is on cities in environmental change and land change in cities, and how India should adapt to the climate crisis. My teaching also revolves around these areas. I teach and have created courses on GIS, remote sensing, land change science, sustainability and planetary boundaries; of course, land change is one of the very important planetary boundaries that we're dealing with.

I also do a lot of work on biodiversity and the interconnection between land cover change, landscape ecology and biodiversity.

2. What sparked your initial interest in land science and which aspects of research do you find most satisfying?

I started with my undergraduate degree in microbiology, chemistry and zoology, and my master's degree was in biological sciences, but largely molecular biology. I came into land change science relatively late, during my master’s, just prior to my Ph.D. That is because I did not find molecular biology very appealing, but I loved looking at landscapes and the spatial connections that influence ecology, people and sustainability.

I did my Ph.D. at the Center for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, and my focus was on understanding ecological patterns at a large scale in the Western Ghats (India), and for that you need to understand how these landscapes related to each other in terms of spatial pattern and movements between them. So I started using remote sensing satellite image data—that was my introduction to the world of land change science.
What I find most fascinating is understanding the pattern, process and interplay between patterns of land change and the human processes that drive these changes. It's a feedback process. People influence landscapes—and landscapes influence, in turn, the way people think and behave, shaping landscapes again. I find these feedback loops very interesting to understand, especially to compare cases to see how people in different parts of the world interact with landscapes differently. In India you might have a different way of interacting with landscapes; in mountain areas people think differently from the coast, and in cities people think and behave differently with landscapes as compared to people in rural areas. That kind of comparison is something that fascinates me.

3. As a woman working in the field of land science, how do you perceive your role and what were the main challenges you faced?

I didn't realize it when I started working in the field of landscape ecology and land change science in 1993, but I was actually one of the first few people to use digital and computer methods for land change science in India. Later I realized that I was one of the few women globally too who was doing this at that time. In 1993, there weren't too many women in this field. There were many researchers doing this, but they were mostly men.
I didn't come in with that understanding, I just came in as somebody who liked this and started work.

So, I would say I've been fortunate not to have faced too many obstacles for being a woman in the field myself. But a lot of my Ph.D. students, and master’s and undergraduate students have been women who do a great deal of fieldwork. While it depends on the landscape you select, safety is always a preoccupation. When you go into the field and do field research, whether I do it myself or plan for my students, it's something we must be very aware of and plan very carefully.

But I would say that there is also quite a bit of unstated bias that women have to fight, especially the presumption that women can't do well at certain kinds of things, such as computer processing, digital processing, the kinds of mathematical or engineering understanding of the big data challenges.

Then again, I've been very pleased to always work with women, younger women and to mentor them. So I would also say that while I witness how challenging it is for them in multiple ways, I am also deeply satisfied to see how much the field has advanced. Now you find as many women in the field of land change science as men, even in leadership positions. If you look at the cutting-edge research in land change science, a lot of it is being done by women. So, I would say that this aspect really feels satisfying to me, looking back at the last 30 years in the field.

4. What are the current opportunities and challenges facing women in science, and what message would you like to convey to young women pursuing a career in this field?

I think the world is open like never before. It's not equal yet, but we're much closer to an equal footing than we were before. So, my one message would be to embrace the opportunity.

I think what happens is that women are sometimes very sensitive to unspoken societal expectations. If society, or their lab environment, or their home environment is disapproving, not all women, but some women do tend to give in to that pressure and agree to select another field of work, or even quit science altogether.

My message to women would be to just push ahead and persist, because at some point the boundaries will give way. Take the support from as many women mentors as you can find, whether in your direct area or an allied area, and find supportive male mentors and colleagues as well. But do always look for supportive women mentorship. If you don't find it at your place of work, you can find it elsewhere. I've had a lot of women reach out to me from different parts of the world, and with the increasing inter-connectedness of the world, you can now be connected to mentors and find collaborations online, which can also be of great help.

So, I would say push ahead, find your mentors, find your tribe and keep working as a community.

5. What is your aspiration for gender equality in science in the future?

My aspiration would be for a world where the unspoken bias in school environments—where young women are often told to stay away from STEM subjects and move towards social science subjects—changes across the world.

A time when women can be encouraged to take up professional careers in mathematics and science as often as they are in biology and social science, where essentially, they can do what they want to do without feeling that these are subjects suited for women, and those are subjects more suited for men. Unfortunately, you still find areas like engineering, physics and mathematics that are really male-dominated. I would like to see those societal barriers dissolve and break down. That has to be done, like I said, at an earlier level, at the high school and undergraduate levels, which is when many girls and young women drop out of STEM subjects.

6. Can you share your thoughts on the development of open access in the publishing industry?

Speaking as a researcher from the Global South, open access has many benefits, but it also has a lot of potential disadvantages. I'd like to speak of both. The big benefit for us is that open access allows people from the Global South who may not have money to access the publications of journals that you otherwise might not have because they're behind a paywall, and that kind of access to data is really important.

The challenge is the publication costs. Because at most open access journals you pay for publication, and the costs are steep and that sets up another disparity—some people have grants to support these publications, and benefit from them, others lack grants to support this research, especially academics in the Global South. Even if journals offer discounts, the amount to be paid remains very high. I see many young early career researchers who want to publish in an open access journal putting their own money into paying the Article Processing Charges. Sometimes, this could be as much as their salary for a year, because the salary disparities in the Global South are so high. So this is something that I really wonder about, because if you can't afford to publish in the open access journals, where does that leave you as a young scholar? I can also see it from the journals’ point of view, that each journal must sustain its finances. I don't really know what the solution is. But we must find a way to support more scholars from the Global South, especially young scholars, with complete waivers.

Overall, open access is both a blessing and a challenge, especially since it is setting up a different kind of inequity—and we have to find ways to deal with that.

7. What are your long-term research goals?

I want to start a systematic study of cities across the world. The world is going to see a huge growth in cities—people who live in cities are supposed to increase from 50% to about 80% in the next 30 years or so. This means that a lot of the future urban areas of the world are yet to be built. How can we build them more sustainably? And how are they being built now? I’m especially interested in the pattern-process linkage that I was talking about earlier. What are the spatial patterns of these cities that will be built? How will those patterns of urban growth impact water, biodiversity, other kinds of land change parameters, and how can we use this knowledge to design future cities in a better way? That's something that I really want to study in the next few years, looking specifically for insights that can hopefully drive policy.

8. Do you have any recommendations for the Land journal?

I think it is important to have a greater focus on promoting participation from the Global South on an equal footing, encouraging ways in which people can contribute without these payments. It would be especially useful to have a specific program for early career researchers, which could include possibilities for full waivers for their papers. Those kinds of grants would be very helpful for academics at the early stages of their career, especially for Ph.D. students and postdocs, because that's the stage at which they need to really publish and also the stage at which they often face strong financial constraints of different kinds. An expansion of grants and fee waivers for these researchers would be especially important and useful.

In terms of areas to focus on, I think studies of urbanization in the Global South would be something that Land could emphasize, as it remains a knowledge gap.

MDPI is attending the Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2023 (JpGU 2023). The event will be held at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan, from 21 to 26 May 2023, and it is organized by the Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU). JpGU is an academic union that encompasses all the Earth and planetary science disciplines and related fields; additionally, it has been organizing annual meetings since 2005. JpGU 2023 will cover a wide range of Earth and planetary sciences, including space and planetary sciences, atmospheric and hydrospheric sciences, human geosciences, solid Earth sciences, and biogeosciences. The JpGU annual meeting provides participants with a good opportunity to become familiar with cutting-edge research and unique approaches to research objects within their own special field and beyond. Representatives of the following MDPI journals will be attending:

• Land;
• Remote Sensing;
• Minerals;
• Sustainability;
• Drones;
• Geographies;
• Climate;
• Geomatics;
• Geosciences;
• Water;
• Quaternary;
• Sensors;
• Earth.

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (#Pub05). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.jpgu.org/meeting_e2023/.

On 11 May 2023, MDPI and the journals Remote Sensing, Drones, Land and IJGI organized the webinar Remote Sensing for Flood Risk and Hazard Management.

The introduction was held by the Chair of the webinar, Dr. Guy Schumann, who holds academic research positions at the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Bristol. He is also the Founder of RSS-Hydro, a European R&D company active in the areas of EO and computer modeling of water risks.

The first speaker to kick off this webinar was Dr. Laurence Hawker, who is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol, specializing in global flood models and Digital Elevation Model data. He develops flood simulations and advances global datasets to support our understanding of current and future flood risks. Dr Hawker’s presentation was entitled “Generating a 30m Global Terrain Map and using them in Global Flood Models”.

The second presentation entitled “Satellite Monitoring of River Discharge and Its Use in Hydrological Applications” was held by Dr. Angelica Tarpanelli. Her research activities mainly regard the development and implementation of algorithms for hydrological and hydraulic applications through the leveraging of satellite sensors data. She is currently a Senior Researcher at the National Research Council, Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection of (CNR-IRPI) in Perugia.

Dr. Patrick Matgen from the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) was the third speaker, and his presentation was entitled “The Sentinel-1 Global Flood Monitoring system of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service”. His personal research interests include the assimilation of remote sensing-derived observations into hydrodynamic models and the assessment of flood hazard and risk at a large scale.

The webinar ended with a Q&A and discussion, moderated by the Chair.

Please note that this webinar is associated with the Topic titled “Advances in Earth Observation and Geosciences”. The deadline is 31 December 2023.

You can watch the recorded webinar below:

Webinar Chair and Keynote Speakers:

• Dr. Guy Schumann, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom; Research and Education Department, RSS-Hydro, Dudelange, Luxembourg;
• Dr. Laurence Hawker, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom;
• Dr. Angelica Tarpanelli, National Research Council, Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection of (CNR-IRPI), Italy;
• Dr. Patrick Matgen, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), Esch-Belval Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg.