Novel Advances in Aquatic Vegetation Monitoring in Ocean, Lakes and Rivers

Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, there has been an increase in the development of strategies for water ecosystem mapping and monitoring. Overall, this is primarily due to legislative efforts to improve the quality of water bodies and oceans. Remote sensing has played a key role in the development of such approaches; from the use of drones for vegetation mapping to autonomous vessels for water quality monitoring. Within the specific context of vegetation characterization, the wide range of available observations, from satellite imagery to high resolution drone aerial imagery, has enabled the development of monitoring and mapping strategies at multiple scales (e.g., micro and meso-scales). This Special Issue aims to collate recent advances in remote sensing based methods applied to ocean, river and lake vegetation characterization, including seaweed/kelp, submerged and emergent vegetation, floating-leaf and free-floating plants. Manuscripts can be related to any aspects of remote sensing techniques used for ecosystem science based applications of monitoring aquatic vegetation, including the development of be-spoke algorithms, sensors and technology for vegetation identification, as well as the quantification of the uncertainty associated with state-of-the art methodologies for vegetation characterization. Of special interest are those manuscripts with real regulatory applications of remote sensing methods to vegetation quality enhancement in oceans, rivers and lakes. The following topics are considered for this Special Issue:

Sub-topics:

• Emerging technologies for vegetation mapping;
• Uncertainty and accuracy of remote sensing techniques for vegetation characterization;
• Comparison of existing methods for vegetation mapping and characterization;
• Up-scaling/down-scaling of vegetation mapping and characterization methods;
• Development of tools (analytical/interface) to report vegetation risk along rivers and catchments;
• Ecosystem science based applications of monitoring aquatic vegetation;
• Regulatory based applications of monitoring aquatic vegetation;
• Novel monitoring techniques to quantify vegetation changes over time;
• Optimization of monitoring/sampling programs for vegetation mapping, assessment and characterization;
• The use of vegetation monitoring for restoration appraisal and effective management;
• The implications of bias in vegetation characterizations on regulatory assessments (e.g., Water Framework Directive);
• Holistic and integrated approaches for large scale vegetation characterization (the use of proxy variables);
• Literature reviews and meta-analysis of existing methods;
• Data Science aspects of vegetation mapping (how to develop remote sensing data bases for effective and accurate national scale assessment);
• Industrial based applications of monitoring aquatic vegetation;
• Vegetation blooms and their impacts.

Dr. Monica Rivas Casado
Guest Editor

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.

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.