Applications of SAR for Environment Observation Analysis (Second Edition)
A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Remote Sensing".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 December 2026 | Viewed by 202
Editors
Interests: earth observation; SAR polarimetry; SAR interferometry; machine learning; multivariate statistical analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: remote sensing; SAR; machine learning; geo big data; wetland; GHG monitoring
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: multivariate statistics; statistical image processing; statistical signal processing; remote sensing; SAR; SAR polarimetry
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We are launching the second Special Issue of Remote Sensing, “Applications of SAR for Environment Observation Analysis (Second Edition)”.
In recent decades, the rapid growth of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) missions has significantly advanced Earth observation capabilities. Upcoming and recent missions, such as NASA–ISRO SAR (NISAR) and ESA’s BIOMASS mission, are expected to further transform the field by providing unprecedented sensitivity to vegetation structure, biomass, and surface deformation. These developments, combined with established techniques such as interferometric SAR (InSAR) and tomographic SAR (TomoSAR), enable detailed characterization of the Earth's surface and subsurface through phase-based analysis. In particular, InSAR phase information supports precise deformation monitoring, while TomoSAR exploits multi-baseline phase diversity to reconstruct 3D vertical structures, especially in forested and urban environments. SAR systems operate independently of solar illumination and weather conditions, offering reliable, all-weather imaging capabilities. Their sensitivity to structural, dielectric, and geometric properties makes them uniquely suited for environmental monitoring. The increasing availability of multi-frequency, multi-temporal, and multi-platform SAR data has also opened new opportunities for advanced statistical modelling and machine learning approaches.
This Special Issue aims to highlight recent advances in SAR data processing and analysis, with particular emphasis on polarimetric, interferometric, and tomographic techniques. Contributions are invited on applications across land (forests, agriculture, wetlands), oceans (ship detection, pollution monitoring), cryosphere (snow and ice dynamics), and natural hazards (floods, earthquakes, subsidence). We especially encourage submissions that leverage next-generation SAR missions and phase-based methodologies to improve environmental understanding.
Articles may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Advanced statistical modelling and signal processing of SAR data for classification, detection, and change analysis;
- Applications of next-generation SAR missions (e.g., NISAR, BIOMASS) for biomass estimation and ecosystem monitoring;
- Exploitation of InSAR phase information for deformation monitoring, time-series analysis, and geophysical parameter retrieval;
- Tomographic SAR (TomoSAR) for 3D reconstruction and vertical structure analysis in forests and urban environments;
- Multitemporal, multi-frequency, and multimodal SAR data fusion for environmental and climate applications;
- Machine learning and deep learning approaches, including physics-informed and generative AI methods, for complex SAR data analysis.
Dr. Vahid Akbari
Dr. Masoud Mahdianpari
Dr. Nizar Bouhlel
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-anonymized 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
- synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
- InSAR phase analysis
- tomographic SAR
- NISAR mission
- BIOMASS mission
- SAR polarimetry
- environmental monitoring
- machine learning for SAR
- multitemporal SAR analysis
- earth observation
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