Remote Sensing of Climate Change Impacts on Ecological, Agricultural, and Water Resources
A Special Issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292) belonging to the section "Environmental Remote Sensing".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2027 | Viewed by 635
Editors
Interests: climate change; remote sensing; extreme disaster events; crop yield monitoring; ecological assessment; marine monitoring
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: remote sensing; drought and flooding detection; vegetation productivity and crop yield monitoring; terrestrial water storage (TWS); marine monitoring; land use and cover changes; vegetation phenology; machine learning; deep learning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
2. Laboratory of Eremology and Combating Desertification, Institute of Arid Regions (IRA), Medenine 4119, Tunisia
Interests: remote sensing; data science; machine learning; deep learning; climate change monitoring; the assessment of natural resources and environmental hazards; sustainable resource management; drought monitoring; disaster risk assessment; climate resilience in vulnerable ecosystems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Climate change is unequivocally altering the functioning of Earth’s natural and managed systems, with profound implications for ecological integrity, vegetation and agricultural productivity and freshwater availability. Rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns and the increased frequency of extreme events are already reshaping habitats, disrupting food and water security, and threatening biodiversity. These changes affect key ecological processes such as phenological timing, carbon uptake, and soil moisture dynamics, while also intensifying the variability of surface runoff and groundwater recharge. In this context, remote sensing offers an unparalleled tool for systematic, large-scale, and repeated observations that are essential to detect, attribute, and project climate-driven changes. Satellite, airborne, and ground sensors provide critical information on vegetation health, vegetation and crop water stress, land cover transformation, and terrestrial water storage, among many other variables. The synergistic use of multi‑sensor data further enables the separation of climate-induced signals from human management effects, enhancing our ability to diagnose underlying drivers. Leveraging these data is fundamental to understanding the vulnerability and resilience of coupled human–natural systems and to developing evidence-based adaptation and mitigation strategies.
This Special Issue aims to present cutting-edge research that utilizes remote sensing techniques to assess and monitor the impacts of climate change on ecological systems, agriculture and water resources. We invite contributions that demonstrate novel applications of optical, radar, thermal, and LiDAR data, unmanned aerial vehicles and ground observation, as well as multi-sensor, machine learning and deep learning, and time-series approaches, to quantify climate-induced changes, the Sustainable Development Goals（SDGs), and support decision-making.
We welcome submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
Remote sensing of climate impacts on terrestrial ecosystems (e.g., vegetation shifts, forest mortality, wetland loss; land use and cover changes; carbon and water cycles; vegetation productivity; phenology); agricultural monitoring under changing climates (e.g., crop yield forecasting, drought/flooding stress, compound disaster events; crop disease and pests); and water resources (e.g., snow cover, glacier retreat, lake and reservoir dynamics, groundwater depletion; terrestrial water storage (TWS)). Manuscript types include original research articles, review papers, technical notes, and case studies demonstrating operational or semi-operational applications.
Prof. Dr. Fengmei Yao
Prof. Dr. Jiahua Zhang
Dr. Malak Henchiri
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.
Keywords
- climate change
- remote sensing
- ecological monitoring
- drought/flooding and impacts
- water resources and terrestrial water storage (TWS)
- time-series analysis
- satellite observation
- unmanned aerial vehicle and ground observation
- machine learning and deep learning
- compound disaster events
- agricultural disaster and crop yields
- land use and cover change
- vegetation phenology
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