Assessing Changes in the Amazon and Cerrado Biomes by Remote Sensing
A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Remote Sensing".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2020) | Viewed by 62468
Special Issue Editors
Interests: climate change; land use and land cover change; agricultural frontiers; Amazon; agrosystems; forest dynamics; remote sensing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: time series analysis; land cover change; forest degradation monitoring; Amazonia
Interests: monitoring of Brazilian biomes; land use land cover change; landscape analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
2. Center for Environmental Studies and Research, State University of Campinas, Campinas 13083-867, Brazil
Interests: landscape ecology; land use and land cover change; geospatial research and innovation for agriculture and the environment
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The Amazon and Cerrado (Brazilian savannah) biomes have long been affected by a colonization process that has impacted natural resources and local populations. In this regard, the scientific community has mainly pointed out the severe effects of deforestation and anthropization of major rivers (mainly through the construction of large hydroelectric dams) on biodiversity and climate change. This is especially true for the Amazon basin ecosystems, which are now considered to be in transition to a disturbance-dominated regime, including changing energy and water cycles (Davidson et al., 2012). In particular, the Southern and Eastern portions of the Amazon basin hold an intense agricultural frontier at the transition between the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. Large‐scale landscape modification in the Brazilian Cerrado is altering the hydrology and affecting carbon stocks and fluxes, as well as biodiversity (Klink and Machado 2005). Despite this, the last decade has also been characterized by important governance efforts to limit the environmental impacts of anthropogenic activities. For example, efficient command-and-control policies combined with market-oriented forms of regulation have enabled the rapid reduction of deforestation rates in the Amazon and Cerrado. Although these recent improvements may be put into question in a period of political and economic crisis, they testify to significant changes towards a development model that will conciliate economic development and environmental conservation. In this regard, specific regions on the Amazon and the Cerrado agricultural frontiers remain very dynamic.
Monitoring and understanding these new dynamics thus represents a challenge for the remote sensing community, which needs to adapt its practices and techniques to the detection of finer forms of change in the Amazon and the Cerrado. In particular, we wish to place special emphasis on (1) fine environmental changes related to forest degradation, the multiplication of dams, irrigation practices, infrastructure development and urbanization; and on (2) actions to reduce these environmental impacts through the adoption of new agricultural practices (e.g. crop–pasture–forestry integration, no-tillage, crop rotation, pasture restauration) and reforestation efforts (especially in riverine forests and private legal reserves under the frame of the implementation of the Brazil's National Environmental Registry of Rural Properties, CAR). In this regard, we will pay special attention to the role of landscapes in maintaining essential ecosystem services such as food or timber provision, soil fertility, biodiversity preservation and climate regulation.
To address these issues, experts can benefit from a wide range of data (from airborne to satellite images) produced by different sensors at various spatio-temporal scales and for diverse applications, e.g. land use mapping, climate and hydrology monitoring. In addition, various remote sensing-based land cover/use maps have also been released recently and their potential to monitor such changes remains unexplored to date.
This Special Issue, "Assessing changes in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes by remote sensing”, will call for original papers that demonstrate the potential of remote sensing data and remote sensing-based products to monitor fine changes in those biomes. The list below provides a general (but not exhaustive) overview of the topics that are solicited for this Special Issue:
- Transdisciplinary studies focusing on the relationships between vegetation dynamics, climate, water and societies;
- Transnational studies
- Studies with a special interest in ecotone areas (e.g. transition between forest and Cerrado areas);
- Studies focusing on solutions implemented to improve land use sustainability
- Smart landscapes to maintain ecosystem services in the Amazon
Dr. Damien Arvor
Dr. Valéry Gond
Dr. Claudio Almeida
Dr. Mateus Batistella
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
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.
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Keywords
- Land use and land cover change
- Climate change
- Multi-source remote sensing
- Land use sustainability
- Landscape approach
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