remotesensing-logo

Journal Browser

Journal Browser

Remote Sensing Tools for Monitoring Vegetation and Enhancing Biodiversity Conservation Strategies

A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Remote Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 May 2026 | Viewed by 1310

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Agricultural, Food, Environmental and Animal Sciences, University of Udine, 33100 Udine, Italy
Interests: remote sensing; plant ecology; plant physiology

E-Mail
Guest Editor
Department of Agricultural, Food, Environmental and Animal Sciences, University of Udine, 33100 Udine, Italy
Interests: remote sensing; plant community ecology; biodiversity; conservation biology; vegetation; ecosystem functioning; upscaling

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, the growing pressures of climate change, habitat loss, and anthropogenic activities have significantly impacted vegetation dynamics and biodiversity patterns worldwide. The accurate and timely monitoring of these changes is crucial for the development of effective conservation strategies. Remote sensing has emerged as a powerful tool to assess vegetation health, species distribution, ecosystem changes, and habitat fragmentation over large spatial and temporal scales. With advances in satellite technologies, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and image analysis algorithms, remote sensing now offers new opportunities for understanding ecological processes and supporting sustainable biodiversity management.

The primary aim of this Special Issue is to collect research and practical applications that utilize remote sensing technologies for monitoring vegetation and enhancing biodiversity conservation. We invite contributions that demonstrate how remote sensing supports the assessment, modeling, and prediction of ecological variables relevant to vegetation dynamics and biodiversity. The theme of this Special Issue is closely related to Remote Sensing topics, specifically to research on methodological innovations and multidisciplinary approaches in environmental monitoring. Hence, applications of remote sensing tecniques (e.g., multispectral, hyperspectral, and thermal) or multiscale approaches (e.g., from UAVs to satellites) to monitor vegetation dynamics and biodiversity are welcome.

Articles may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

-Applications of UAV species mapping;

-Time-series analysis of vegetation indices;

-Upscaling approach in landscape monitoring;

-Land cover changes;

-Protected areas monitoring;

-Machine learning in remote sensing;

-Time-series analyses;

-Vegetation/habitat unsupervised classification;

-Remote monitoring of global change impact on vegetation;

-Remote sensing of wildfire impacts on vegetation.

Dr. Marco Vuerich
Dr. Giacomo Trotta
Guest Editors

Paolo Cingano
Guest Editor Assistant

Affiliation: Department of Environmental and Life Sciences (DSV), University of Trieste, Via Licio Giorgieri 5, 34127 Trieste, Italy

Email: PAOLO.CINGANO@phd.units.it

Webpage: https://dsv.units.it/en/department/people/doctoral-students?q=en/node/60842

Interests: remote sensing; plant ecology; seagrasses; coastal systems

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. 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

  • remote sensing
  • upscaling approach
  • vegetation dynamics
  • biodiversity conservation
  • global change impact
  • machine learning technique
  • hyperspectral and multispectral data
  • time-series analyses
  • vegetation indices (e.g., NDVI)
  • vegetation mapping

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Other

50 pages, 2821 KB  
Systematic Review
Remote Sensing of Woody Plant Encroachment: A Global Systematic Review of Drivers, Ecological Impacts, Methods, and Emerging Innovations
by Abdullah Toqeer, Andrew Hall, Ana Horta and Skye Wassens
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(3), 390; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18030390 - 23 Jan 2026
Viewed by 838
Abstract
Globally, grasslands, savannas, and wetlands are degrading rapidly and increasingly being replaced by woody vegetation. Woody Plant Encroachment (WPE) disrupts natural landscapes and has significant consequences for biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and key ecosystem services. This review synthesizes findings from 159 peer-reviewed studies identified [...] Read more.
Globally, grasslands, savannas, and wetlands are degrading rapidly and increasingly being replaced by woody vegetation. Woody Plant Encroachment (WPE) disrupts natural landscapes and has significant consequences for biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and key ecosystem services. This review synthesizes findings from 159 peer-reviewed studies identified through a PRISMA-guided systematic literature review to evaluate the drivers of WPE, its ecological impacts, and the remote sensing (RS) approaches used to monitor it. The drivers of WPE are multifaceted, involving interactions among climate variability, topographic and edaphic conditions, hydrological change, land use transitions, and altered fire and grazing regimes, while its impacts are similarly diverse, influencing land cover structure, water and nutrient cycles, carbon and nitrogen dynamics, and broader implications for ecosystem resilience. Over the past two decades, RS has become central to WPE monitoring, with studies employing classification techniques, spectral mixture analysis, object-based image analysis, change detection, thresholding, landscape pattern and fragmentation metrics, and increasingly, machine learning and deep learning methods. Looking forward, emerging advances such as multi-sensor fusion (optical– synthetic aperture radar (SAR), Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)–hyperspectral), cloud-based platforms including Google Earth Engine, Microsoft Planetary Computer, and Digital Earth, and geospatial foundation models offer new opportunities for scalable, automated, and long-term monitoring. Despite these innovations, challenges remain in detecting early-stage encroachment, subcanopy woody growth, and species-specific patterns across heterogeneous landscapes. Key knowledge gaps highlighted in this review include the need for long-term monitoring frameworks, improved socio-ecological integration, species- and ecosystem-specific RS approaches, better utilization of SAR, and broader adoption of analysis-ready data and open-source platforms. Addressing these gaps will enable more effective, context-specific strategies to monitor, manage, and mitigate WPE in rapidly changing environments. Full article
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

Back to TopTop