Future of the Wetlands in Megacities under Rapid Urbanization: Geospatial Analysis and Modeling of the Land-Use Changes Using Remotely Sensed Data and GIS

Dear Colleagues,

Our planet is rapidly urbanizing. According to the United Nations, the global population in cities increased from 0.8 billion to 4.4 billion from 1950 to 2020 and is projected to surpass 6.7 billion by 2050. This development would place immense pressure on the wetland ecosystems across megacities worldwide, transforming large areas into built-up areas. Wetland ecosystems play a vital role in urban areas, providing valuable ecosystem services that help sustain the urban environmental quality, human well-being, biodiversity, urban cooling, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Moreover, they are distinctly represented in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 3—good health and well-being; SDG 6—clean water and sanitation; SDG 8—decent work and economic growth; SDG 11—sustainable cities and communities; SDG 13—climate action; SDG 15—life on land. Identifying the impact of urbanization on wetlands in megacities can provide scientifically sound information for urban planning and the safeguarding of urban wetlands. Geospatial analysis and modeling of land-use changes provide important guidance to urban planners and policymakers to protect wetland ecosystems in urban areas, and the projected future land use/land cover changes provide more precise information on implemented decision making.

Satellite data, GIS techniques, and the increasing availability of geospatial data aid in wetland mapping, monitoring, and modeling for protecting wetlands and enhancing their combined ecosystem services. Various spatial and temporal resolutions of satellite data assist in investigating multiple-scale urban wetlands at local, regional, continental, and global scales. Moreover, machine learning algorithms and geospatial cloud-based platforms, such as Google Earth Engine (GEE), provide long-term monitoring and measuring of wetland conditions, their status, past–future changes, and their combined ecosystem services.

This Special Issue will bring a platform to collect research on the “Future of the wetlands in megacities under rapid urbanization: Geospatial analysis and modeling of the land-use changes using remotely sensed data and GIS”, emphasizing ongoing studies and novel contributions in this field.

The following topics are examples of possible themes for this Special Issue, but they are not limited to them:

• Wetland mapping due to urbanization using different types of satellite datasets;
• Change detection in urban wetlands;
• Noval methodologies for simulating future wetlands due to urbanization;
• Effect of urbanization on wetland ecosystem services provided by urban wetlands;
• Urban heat island mitigation;
• Cool island effect of the urban wetlands;
• Machine learning algorithms for wetland classification and monitoring;
• Wetland conservation in megacities using Satellite data and GIS;
• Scenario-based wetland change simulation due to urbanization considering SDGs and nexus approach;
• Norval methods for land change modeling due to urbanization for policy recommendation;
• Sustainable planning of urban wetlands and empirical discussions.

Dr. Darshana Athukorala
Prof. Dr. Yuji Murayama
Guest Editors

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• urbanization
• wetland change
• wetland sustainability
• future wetlands
• megacities
• satellite data
• GIS
• GIScience
• future projection
• scenario-based simulation
• wetland ecosystem services
• urban cool island effect
• urban heat island mitigation
• landscape sustainability
• urban ecological environment
• SDGs
• spatiotemporal analysis
• spatial thinking
• urban climate
• geospatial data
• sustainability indicators
• machine learning
• time and space
• human well-being and health
• sustainable urban planning
• land use/land cover
• satellite-derived indices for wetland mapping