Earth Observation for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): From Environmental Monitoring to Social Indicators
A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Remote Sensing".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2027 | Viewed by 43
Special Issue Editors
Interests: spatial analysis; EO satellite imagery processing; spatial statistics; geostatistical analysis; climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience; nature based solutions; remote sensing; carbon sequestration; biodiversity; SDG; sustainability; environment assessment
Interests: remote sensing; hydrological and hydraulic modelling; water resources sustainability
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The 2022 Special Issue Space for Sustainability highlighted both the promise and the unresolved challenges of using Earth observation (EO) to support sustainable development indicators. It showed that EO had growing potential to support 108 SDG indicators, while also identifying persistent barriers around data quality, methodological compatibility, cloud cover, uncertainty, technical capacity, infrastructure, and the limited integration of EO into official statistical systems, especially for social and economic indicators. The field has advanced rapidly since then. A new generation of missions is expanding what can be measured from space: ESA’s Biomass mission launched in April 2025 to improve forest carbon observations; NISAR launched in July 2025 to provide advanced radar-based monitoring of land deformation, ecosystems, soil moisture and water-related change; TEMPO and GEMS is now delivering high-frequency air-quality observations over North America; Copernicus CHIME is being developed to provide hyperspectral observations for agriculture, biodiversity and soils; and CO2M is being developed specifically to monitor anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Commercial and hybrid systems are also reshaping greenhouse-gas monitoring, including the expanding GHGSat constellation, while MethaneSAT demonstrated the scientific and policy value of wide-area methane observations.
This Special Issue aims to examine how these new EO capabilities can move the field beyond proof-of-concept studies toward operational, policy-relevant, and decision-ready contributions to SDG monitoring. It will focus not only on how emerging missions can strengthen current SDG indicators before 2030, but also on how EO can inform the design of post-2030 sustainability frameworks, where timely, spatially explicit, interoperable, and trusted data will be essential. This SI will aim to bring together methodological innovation, sensor applications, indicator development, uncertainty assessment, and policy translation across environmental and socio-economic domains. The timing is especially relevant because the UN’s 2030 Agenda remains the current global framework, the 2025 SDG Report warns progress is off track, and broader UN processes such as the Pact for the Future are now shaping discussions on development governance beyond 2030.
Suggested themes include: greenhouse-gas monitoring from space; methane and carbon accounting; biodiversity, ecosystem condition and forest carbon; hyperspectral EO for soils, agriculture and habitat condition; radar EO for water, wetlands, flood risk and land deformation; air quality and human health; EO for social and economic indicators; indicator validation, uncertainty and interoperability; integration of EO with national statistics, citizen science and in situ data; digital public infrastructure, AI and cloud platforms for SDG reporting; and the role of EO in shaping post-2030 sustainability indicators and governance. We welcome research articles, review papers, methodological papers, data papers, perspective articles, and case studies that demonstrate how new EO datasets can improve the credibility, scalability and policy relevance of sustainable development monitoring.
Dr. Ana Andries
Dr. Belén Martí-Cardona
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- Earth observation
- Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- post-2030 sustainability frameworks
- satellite missions
- greenhouse gas monitoring
- biodiversity and ecosystem monitoring
- hyperspectral remote sensing
- radar remote sensing
- geospatial indicators
- environmental and social indicators
- post-2030 sustainability
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