Recent Advances in Remote Sensing with Nighttime Lights

Dear Colleagues,

Nighttime lights satellite images provide a unique perspective for observing our planet. Given that most of the nocturnal lights are closely related to human activities, nighttime lights images have been widely used in mapping urban settlements, estimating socioeconomic indicators (e.g., population, GDP, energy consumption, and house vacancy rate), evaluating events (e.g., Conflicts and wars), and other studies, such as fisheries, gas flaring, light pollution, wildfire, and aurora. Nighttime lights remote sensing has become a research frontier and is drawing increasing attention from scholars of remote sensing, GIS, urban planning, economy, and other research communities.

In 2014, Remote Sensing had published a Special Issue of “Remote Sensing with Nighttime Lights” (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/special_issues/nightimelights) edited by Dr. Christopher D. Elvidge, a pioneer of nighttime lights remote sensing study. This very successful Special Issue published 23 papers, and some of these papers have very high citations. During the past two years after publication of this special issue, nighttime lights remote sensing experienced new and fast developments, which are indicated by new sensors and satellites, especially some small satellites (e.g., Jilin-1 from China), methods (e.g., fusion with other data), and applications (e.g., pollution mapping and event detection).

This Special Issue stands on the shoulders of last successful special issue and aims to publish original manuscripts of latest innovative research in recent advances in nighttime lights remote sensing. Comprehensive reviews of this research field are also welcome. The potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• State-of-the-art remote sensing technologies for capturing nighttime lights
• Methods for processing nighttime lights remotely sensed data
• Fusion of nighttime lights with other remote sensing data, and/or other data (e.g., social media data, traffic data, and in situ data)
• Applications of nighttime light remotely sensed data (e.g., urban and population mapping, human activities analysis, events detection, and environmental and ecological impacts analysis)
• Evaluations and/or applications of new nighttime lights remotely sensed data

Authors are required to check and follow the specific Instructions to Authors, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/instructions.

Dr. Bailang Yu
Dr. Yuyu Zhou
Dr. Chunyang He
Dr. Xiaofeng Li
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.