Thermal and Optical Remote Sensing: Evaluating Urban Green Spaces and Urban Heat Islands in a Changing Climate

Dear Colleagues,

Urbanization is typified by spatial and temporal transformation arising from conversion of natural to impervious and built-up surfaces. These conversions affect ecosystem functioning at local, regional and global scales and compromise their ability to provide their goods and services. Furthermore, the conversions are known to be a major driver of environmental change associated with among others, natural landscape fragmentation and related adverse effects, deterioration in environmental quality, biodiversity loss, and change in micro- and macro-climate. Hence, establishment, restoration and preservation of urban natural and green infrastructure is increasingly becoming a popular approach to dealing with adversities associated with urban processes. Understanding urban spatio-temporal ecological and natural patterns is critical for the management of urban physical, ecological and social processes. Specifically, understanding past, present and future patterns and drivers is critical for among others urban environmental management, urban spatial planning, optimal and sustainable use of urban landscapes and climate change mitigation. A recent proliferation of remotely sensed datasets offer great potential in understanding the relationship between urban process and their respective ecological and natural integrity.

This Special Issue focuses on theoretical and practical adoption of remote sensing approaches and datasets in understanding urban green and natural infrastructure and related ecosystem services. Specifically, the special issue solicits articles exploring among others: urban green spaces mapping and transformation, non-ecological urban natural assets, thermal characteristics and variability, green spaces and urban forests rehabilitation, quantification and mapping of ecosystem services and micro and macroclimate change modelling.

Prof. Dr. John O. Odindi
Prof. Dr. Elhadi Adam
Prof. Dr. Elfatih M. Abdel-Rahman
Dr. Yuyu Zhou
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-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.