Advances in Remote Sensing for Burned Area Mapping
A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Earth Observation for Emergency Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 69
Special Issue Editors
Interests: remote sensing; forest engineering; wildfires; geo-statistics; image classification; environmental monitoring and modeling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: landscape ecology; geodesy; geo-statistics; GIS; remote sensing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: lidar; remote sensing; spatial analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Although fires are a primary natural component influencing environments and landscapes dynamics, they pose critical ecological and socio-economic challenges when their intensity, frequency and severity are exacerbated. However, they are also affected by the rapidly changing climate or interactions with human activities and infrastructures (urban and wildland–urban interface–WUI–fires). Mapping their spatial distribution is thus essential for assessing lands impacts and informing long-term planning to mitigate further degradation. Burned area assessments extend beyond perimeter delineation, and remote sensing provides suitable tools for the advanced analysis of immediate post-fire effects.
This Special Issue integrates traditional detection approaches with geospatial analyses and thematic mapping, focusing on post-fire consequences such as fire severity, fire regime, biomass loss, hydrogeological alterations, microclimatic variations, landscape changes, and human-related consequences—including health risks, infrastructure damage, and degraded ecosystem services—which are essential for a comprehensive understanding of fire-induced ecological and socio-economic impacts. Studies employing multi-scale, multi-sensor—including passive (multispectral, hyperspectral, thermal) and active (SAR, LiDAR) data—multi-platform (satellite, airborne, UAV, proximal sensors) remote sensing are encouraged to enhance spectral and structural details. This also encompasses approaches entailing geo-statistical, geo-informatic, geomatic, and geographical information systems (GISs), spectral mixture analysis, 3D modeling and up-to-date modeling/processing algorithms.
We invite original research articles, reviews, and case studies addressing the following topics:
- Advances in remote sensing for burned area mapping, active fire detection and fire severity assessment approaches;
- Spectral and thermal characterization of post-fire combustion residues;
- Biomass loss and carbon emission quantification;
- Immediate biodiversity and habitat impact, including species resilience and ecosystem transformations;
- Fire-induced microclimatic changes and fire–weather interactions;
- Urban, peri-urban, and wildland–urban interface (WUI) fires, with socio-economic implications for air quality, ecosystem services, public health, and infrastructures;
- Immediate impact on soil dynamics, hydrological cycles, and water resources;
- Novel fire-related landscape metrics;
- Innovative fire simulation for burned areas’ spread;
- Cutting-edge processing and modeling algorithms.
You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Fire.
Dr. Giandomenico De Luca
Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Modica
Dr. Lorenzo Arcidiaco
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
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. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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
- burn areas’ detection and mapping
- geo-informatics
- fire severity
- fire regime
- biomass loss
- wildland–urban interface (WUI) fires
- three-dimensional modeling
- image processing
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