Remote Sensing of Forests, Grasslands, and Lakes and Their Interactions

Dear Colleagues,

Forest–grassland–lake systems form tightly linked ecological networks that regulate regional water, carbon, and energy cycles while supporting biodiversity and essential ecosystem services. Across many landscapes, these three components are linked through ecohydrological connectivity (e.g., runoff, groundwater exchange, riparian corridors), biophysical feedbacks (e.g., albedo, evapotranspiration), and disturbance–recovery processes (e.g., fire, drought, grazing, land-use change). Under accelerating climate change and increasing human pressure, shifts in vegetation composition, shoreline dynamics, and water availability can propagate across the forest–grassland–lake continuum, amplifying ecological risks and management challenges.

Modern remote sensing is improving our ability to observe these interactions across varying scales, from local ecotones to entire watersheds. Multi-source Earth observation (optical multispectral/hyperspectral, thermal, SAR, LiDAR) and UAV measurements enable consistent monitoring of vegetation structure and function, phenology, surface water dynamics, and lake water quality. In addition, time-series analytics, data fusion, cloud computing, and machine learning/AI provide powerful tools to integrate heterogeneous datasets, detect change, attribute drivers, and support near-real-time applications for ecosystem management.

This Special Issue, “Remote Sensing of Forests, Grasslands, and Lakes and Their Interactions”, invites contributions that advance the observation, understanding, and practical use of remote sensing to characterize cross-ecosystem linkages and their spatiotemporal dynamics. We welcome studies ranging from methodological innovations to applied case studies that connect remote sensing products with ecological and hydrological processes, ultimately informing conservation, restoration, and sustainable resource management.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Remote sensing of forest–grassland ecotones, riparian zones, and lake–land transition belts (mapping, classification, and change detection);
• Spatiotemporal dynamics of vegetation structure, biomass, productivity, and phenology in forest–grassland–lake mosaics;
• Ecohydrological connectivity and water balance monitoring (evapotranspiration, soil moisture, groundwater–surface water interactions, runoff pathways);
• Lake dynamics and limnological indicators from remote sensing (water extent/level, surface temperature, turbidity, chlorophyll-a, aquatic vegetation);
• Disturbance and resilience across connected ecosystems (fire, drought, grazing, invasive species, nutrient loading, and land-use change);
• Carbon, energy, and ecosystem function assessments using multi-sensor observations and derived products;
• Multi-sensor/multi-platform data fusion (satellite–UAV–airborne–in situ integration) for cross-scale monitoring;
• AI and machine learning approaches for automated mapping, forecasting, early warning, and uncertainty quantification;
• Assimilation of remote sensing into ecohydrological and ecosystem process models, and coupling with decision-support frameworks;
• Applications supporting watershed management, biodiversity conservation, protected area planning, restoration prioritization, and climate adaptation strategies.

We welcome submissions of original research, reviews, methodological developments, case studies, and short communications.

Dr. Leizhen Liu
Dr. Shasha Liu
Dr. Bin Sun
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-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.

• forest–grassland–lake interactions
• ecohydrological connectivity
• time-series remote sensing
• multi-sensor data fusion
• vegetation phenology
• surface water dynamics
• land cover/land-use change (LCLUC)
• disturbance and resilience (fire/drought/grazing)
• machine learning for earth observation
• watershed-scale ecosystem monitoring