Advances in Remote Sensing of Coral Reefs

Dear Colleagues,

Remote sensing has long been acknowledged as an important tool in the study and management of coral reef ecosystems. Globally, reefs face unprecedented challenges to survival and adaptation. This includes both natural and anthropogenic stresses at local or regional scales, and the worldwide environmental pressures associated with climate change and ocean acidification. Despite these factors, phylogenetic and ecological work is revealing the diversity of coral holobiont response and resilience to environmental impacts. At the same time, advances in optical sensing technology are providing large amounts of high-quality, actionable data. Inexpensive, simple to operate aerial and underwater survey vehicles yield high-resolution spatial, temporal, and spectral data to studies of individual reefs, while small-satellite constellations are providing daily, multispectral revisit imagery on a global scale. Airborne and spaceborne sensors including the upcoming plankton, aerosol, cloud, ocean ecosystem (PACE) and hyperspectral infrared imager (HyspIRI) missions will reveal processes and patterns that have previously been unobservable.

This issue will focus on newly developed technology, techniques, and analysis to enable the next generation of coral reef remote sensing. Topics include unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles, small-satellites, hyperspectral techniques and insights, bio-optical modeling, data processing, spectral signature analyses, and advances in calibration, validation, and measurement uncertainty to enable trend detection and high-quality science. Submissions which describe application to reef surveys, management, predictive modeling, and stress–response are encouraged.

Dr. Brandon Russell
Prof. Heidi M. Dierssen
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.