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The Impact of Anti-COVID Measures Seen from the Sky

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 1196

Special Issue Editors

Université de Lorraine, Laboratoire LOTERR-EA7304Département de Géographie, Environnement et Aménagement, Campus Île du Saulcy, Bâtiment C/17, 57045 Metz, CEDEX 01, France
Interests: technical geography; risk; climate change; hydrology; time series analysis
Department of Geography, Faculty of Geography and Geology, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, 700505 Iasi, Romania
Interests: natural hazards; geomorphology; landslides; soil erosion; landslide susceptibility; risk assessment; land degradation; geomorphometry; LiDAR; UAV; risk perception
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

The declaration of the pandemic health emergency by the WHO due to the rapid progression and severity of infection of the new respiratory disease SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has forced many governments during this year to take measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection. These anti-COVID-19 measures (e.g., lockdown periods) have, in turn, had mixed effects on the environment, especially in large agglomerations and urban areas where reduced traffic and economic activities have led to a decrease in concentrations of air pollution, but also other consequences on the environment. It is important to study and understand as we move from this crisis to recovery how social, economic, climate and environmental factors have been changing and how they continue to vary across different geographical areas, while also considering the measures of confrontation applied.

The science of remote sensing allows us to detect, measure and model changes and events that occur on Earth's surface and in the atmosphere. There are satellites that by optical depth can measure the concentrations of NO2, CO and aerosols in the atmosphere (e.g., the OMI instrument on the Aura platform, the AIRS and MODIS instruments on the Aqua platform, or the recent Sentinel-5P). Besides, there are satellites that have an infrared thermal band that can be used to estimate and study the change of the Land Surface Temperature (LST) before, during and after the lockdown periods (e.g., Sentinel-3A/SLSTR, MODIS/MOD11A1 with daily measurement, MODIS/MOD11A2 with 8-day measurement, or Landsat 8, 7, 5 Level-2 Surface Reflectance). Today, the download of atmospheric data from Sentinel-5P is now available from the Google Earth Engine application. This revolutionary application is a new way to filter, obtain and pre-process air pollution data or calculate LST applying to specific geographical areas. The purpose of the study of this relationship between LST and air pollutants is to demonstrate whether there is a significant and reliable relationship between the reduction of heat islands in urban areas and the reduction of atmospheric pollution. This may explain whether there is a direct relationship between LST and anthropic activities during periods with anti-COVID-19 measures. On the other hand, in this Special Issue, we expect modeling with Landsat data of areas that show a statistically significant difference of LST between before and during lockdown with the help of the Hot Spot–Cold Spot analysis of the Getis-Ord Gi* statistic.

We would like to invite you to contribute papers that study these topics of correlation between LST and air pollution with different geospatial methods and methodologies, including big data analytics, space–time modelling and simulation, environmental modelling, data visualisation, hot-spot analysis, change detection, both with the help of open source and non-open source software. Articles studying other indices that can be calculated from spectral bands in relation to anti-COVID-19 measures are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Ionel Haidu
Dr. Mihai Ciprian MĂRGĂRINT
Prof. Dr. Valerio Baiocchi
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

  • remote sensing
  • COVID-19
  • LST
  • air pollutants
  • environment
  • climate
  • urban areas
  • heat islands
  • lockdown periods
  • policy impact
  • change detection
  • spatial modelling
  • hot-spot analysis
  • time series

Published Papers

There is no accepted submissions to this special issue at this moment.
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