Remote Sensing based Urban Development and Climate Change Research

Dear Colleagues,

Urban development plays a critical role in mitigation and adaptation to climate change. This is because urban areas host more than half of the growing global population and are responsible for 70% of the global greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to global warming trends, urban areas experience a local heat island effect resulting from the high density of impervious surfaces, modification of air ventilation patterns from built-up structures, as well as waste heat emissions from residential and industrial sources. Furthermore, high air temperatures amplify air pollution and influence intensity and frequency of rainfall.

As cities are getting warmer, they also experience growing population. Under changing climate, urban development must adapt to increasing pressure on resources, such as water and energy, as their demand increases with warmer temperatures. At the same time, the supply and storage of these resources may be impacted by changes in regional precipitation pattern or early snow melt.

A majority of cities are coastal and are already facing the challenge of adaptation to sea level rise and enhanced flooding. Cities located in floodplains are at increased risk of flooding from the intensification of storm events.

A wide range of remote sensing technologies such as optical, thermal infrared, microwave, as well as light detection and ranging (LiDAR) are used to observe the urban environment and its changes. These technologies can contribute to monitoring, testing, and exploring solutions for evolving urban development to adapt to the changing climate. Furthermore, remote sensing observations can also help to understand past urban expansion and its influence on climate.

We are requesting papers for a Special Issue of Remote Sensing on remote sensing based urban development and climate change research. Specific topics include, but are not limited to

• The use of remote sensing to understand the evolution of the urban heat island, its interaction with global warming trends, and its impacts on air quality, energy or water use, and urban vegetation
• The use of remote sensing to identify urban development at risk of sea level rise, coastal and inland flooding
• The effect of urban development and climate change on water availability and quality
• Monitoring urban emissions of waste heat and greenhouse gases
• Novel remote sensing techniques including new sensors, new methodology, new datasets, etc., for monitoring urban development in response to climate change research
• Novel remote sensing applications for parameterization of urban areas in climate models.

We especially encourage submissions that combine different methodologies such as remote sensing, urban climatology, downscaled climate projections, air quality models, spatial analysis, etc., to understand the overarching topic.

Dr. Cristina Milesi
Dr. Galina Churkina
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.