Geospatial Monitoring on Local to Global Scale Impacts of Anthropogenic Landscape Changes

Dear Colleagues,

Everything that has contributed to the development of modern human society is delivered by nature, and progressively, research determines the natural world’s incalculable significance to our health, wealth, food, and security. The worldwide economic movement eventually depends on different services provided by the environment and nature. A mounting human population and exploding human consumption have substantially degraded 75% of Earth’s land areas. These lands that have either become wastelands, are contaminated, or have been deforested and transformed to agricultural land are also the main driving force behind the unparalleled environmental transformation we are witnessing today, through the augmented demand for water, land, and energy. If this unsustainable growth continues, 95% of the Earth’s productive land areas might become degraded by 2050, which will force millions of people to migrate, as food production will break down in many places. Productive land degradation, loss of biodiversity, and climate alteration are diverse aspects of the same principal challenge: the increasingly hazardous influence of our choices on the health of our natural environment and ecosystem. There are three different types of landscape changes influenced by anthropogenic activities that have extensive impacts on the global climate and are interconnected with ecological and biophysical processes: Urbanization, geological changes, and forest degradation. The growing threat of climate change rapidly increases due to the decline of biodiversity by overexploitation of species, deforestation, agriculture, and land transformation. Climate change is distressing in all parts of the world: disrupting economies, affecting lives, altering the dynamics of entire species on the earth. Greenhouse gases are found to be one of the major reasons for the rising temperature and climate change. Research has evidenced that forests, including wetland forests, help to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

Researchers are developing sophisticated new tracking and systematic tools to match commodities and their supply chains to certain influences on the ecosystem. Improving transparency around these complex relationships may help to stop global climate change and biodiversity loss. To ensure the conservation, restoration, and sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems and their services, in particular, forests, wetlands, mountains, and drylands, it is important to find the existing techniques and understand the gaps in analyzing urbanization process, geological changes, and forest degradation associated with anthropogenic activities, which can help in landscape and climate-change-related planning.

This Special Issue aims to explore new challenges and gather relevant research work of novel applications that employ remote sensing techniques for quantification of local to global scale impacts of anthropogenic landscape changes.

Research contributions are welcome. In particular, novel contributions covering, but not limited to, the following subtopics are welcome:

• Remotely sensed approach to monitor the urban heat island;
• Spatial approach on forest fire investigation;
• Impact of anthropogenic activities on environmental change;
• Ecological effects of anthropogenic activities;
• Influence of anthropogenic activity on forest cover;
• Assessing urban sprawl from remotely sensed data;
• Coastal wetland climate change and anthropogenic activities;
• Soil, water, and air pollution.

Dr. Rajchandar Padmanaban
Dr. Parth Sarathi Roy
Dr. Jacques Baudry
Guest Editors

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