Dear Colleagues,

Landsat is the longest running continuously operating Earth observation satellite program. During the last 50 years, Landsat satellites have documented Earth's changing landscape using four types of multispectral sensors (i.e., MSS, TM, ETM +, and OLI). The science quality of the Landsat archive, including careful calibration and standardization, allows it to serve as a “gold standard” for studies harmonizing multiple sources of data. In many respects, Landsat-9 is a clone of Landsat-8. It was launched on September 27th, 2021, in time to extend Landsat’s remarkable record of 50 years. Currently, Landsat-9 is the latest satellite in the Landsat series, and it is believed that this mission will continue and improve the capabilities of Landsat-8. The 8-day coverage of the combined Landsat-OLI (8/9) constellation will support many application areas in biosphere, cryosphere and atmosphere sciences. Moreover, this constellation will also help to better support emerging applications such as water quality monitoring, precision agriculture (crop water and fertilization stress, evapotranspiration, etc.), climate change assessment, forest and ecological systems, etc. More importantly, it is expected to support the monitoring and delivery of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

The Operational Land Imager-2 (OLI-2) is identical to the OLI-1 carried onboard Landsat-8, providing data in the VNIR and SWIR wavelengths with a high quality of calibration/validation procedures. The combined virtual constellation of Landsat-OLI (8/9) and Sentinel-MSI (2A/2B) will provide coverage of the Earth's surface (land, water and ice) with a temporal resolution of less than 3 days, allowing the acquisition of 740 new scenes per day from each platform. Landsat-9 should thus continue the heritage of providing global and open access “science-grade” data to inform long-term assessments of land and aquatic change in response to both natural and human forces. For these reasons, this Special Issue provides an opportunity to collect original manuscripts on innovative research exploring the capabilities of the Landsat-9 instrument in several applications, as well as, its joint use with data acquired by other satellites.

We would like to invite you to submit articles about your recent research with respect to the following topics:

• Radiometric calibration and atmospheric corrections of OLI-2 data;
• Spectral characterization of OLI-2 data;
• Spatial characterization of OLI-2 data;
• Validation and quality-assurance assessment and characterization of the OLI-2 data (e.g., radiometry, geometry, and topography) and products (biophysical, physiological, and physical parameters);
• Radiometric and spectral cross-calibration of OLI-2 data with other satellite sensors;
• Comparison between OLI-2 and other optical satellite sensors (e.g., TM, ETM+, OLI-1, Sentinel-MSI, etc.);
• Land surface monitoring using OLI-2 data, including (but not limited to) land cover and land use change, agriculture, forest, urbanization, disasters, climate modelling and hydrological applications;
• Combination and fusion approaches of OLI-2 data with other sensors' data (e.g., Sentinel-MSI 2A and 2B, hyperspectral data, Radar data, Planet-scope, Worldview series, etc.).
• Tools, toolboxes, and algorithms for processing and analyzing OLI-2 data;
• Other OLI-2 related studies.

Dr. Jingzhe Wang
Prof. Dr. Abderrazak Bannari
Dr. Jian Li
Dr. Xinghua Li
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.

• remote sensing
• radiometric and atmospheric correction
• quality assessment
• land surface monitoring
• land use/cover changes (LUCC)
• natural resource monitoring and mapping