Advances of Remote Sensing in the Analysis of the Spatial and Temporal Variability of Land Surface

Dear Colleagues,

The current availability of high-quality remote sensing data and products on the status and evolution of the land surface offers today a unique opportunity to study the complexity of land as a dynamic component of the Earth System.

Land surface parameters (e.g., land use/land cover, albedo, roughness, moisture, temperature) vary greatly in space, exerting a pronounced effect on the climate variability, from the local to the global scale. Such dynamics is further complicated by human activities, which are able to interfere with natural mechanisms, exacerbating climatic change as well as climate change effects on the land surface. Bad management strategies can favor disaster risk, e.g., causing hydrological instability and floods or promoting long-term persistent processes as land degradation and loss of natural resources. In such a context, remote sensing is a major source of information to analyze these complex relationships on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales thereby supporting the scientific research and enabling the development and implementation of successful sustainability strategies.        

This Special Issue is open to all the experts from the remote sensing community that work in this field. We welcome papers focusing on the characterization of spatial properties and/or processes occurring within the land surface. Works Specific topics include but are not limited to:

• Ecosystem goods and services;
• Ecological remote sensing and landscape structure;
• Resilience and vegetation recovery;
• Characterization of land surface phenology at local/regional scale;
• Land-use land-cover change;
• Assessment of drought impacts;
• Land degradation and desertification;
• Urban sprawl;
• Geohazard (floods, landslides, etc.);
• Land surface energy fluxes/evapotranspiration;
• Climate change impacts on biotic components (and vice versa);
• Land surface water dynamics;
• Methods for soil moisture retrieval;
• Algorithms for multitemporal analysis;
• Algorithms to retrieve and mapping land surface variables;
• Airborne/spaceborne lidar applications;
• Applications of machine learning and deep learning methods across a wide range of ecosystems;
• EO observations to support decision-making processes;
• Space economy.

Dr. Maria Lanfredi
Dr. Rosa Coluzzi
Dr. Vito Imbrenda
Dr. Tiziana Simoniello
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.