Sensor Systems for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Monitoring
A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sensing".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 November 2026 | Viewed by 451
Editors
Interests: ecosystem monitoring; tropical ecology; (spatial) acoustics; sustainable agriculture
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Recent advances in autonomous sensing, artificial intelligence, and low-cost computing have transformed the way biodiversity and ecosystems can be monitored. As such, ecological research is undergoing a revolution in the way environmental data is collected, with a wealth of new opportunities to collect continuous, standardised data on species presence, activity, behaviour, and ecosystem processes across large spatial and temporal scales. Sensing systems currently cover many aspects of vital environmental indicators: bioacoustics, camera trapping, eDNA, biologging, and chemical and physical feature recording, but there may be many other unexplored sensing modalities that may become more vital in years to come.
Beyond the development of sensors, sensing platforms are increasingly supported by developments in communication networks, biodegradable materials, machine learning, signal processing, edge computing, low-power embedded hardware, specialised AI computing platforms, and energy-efficient power systems, all of which facilitate long-term distribution of sensor networks and efficient data processing. As global biodiversity continues to decline and environmental monitoring becomes increasingly important for conservation, restoration, and sustainable land management, scalable sensing systems are becoming a critical component of ecological research and environmental decision-making.
This Special Issue aims to present and disseminate the most recent advances related to sensor technologies and analytical methods for biodiversity and environmental monitoring.
Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Bioacoustics (including multichannel spatial arrays);
- Camera trapping;
- Thermal imaging;
- eDNA;
- Terrestrial, airborne, or satellite LiDAR;
- Radio Tomographic Imaging (RTI);
- Dataloggers and weather stations;
- Robotic sensing platforms (e.g., drones, rovers);
- Earth observation;
- Animal tagging and biologging;
- Multimodal sensors;
- AI classification systems (audio, visual, other);
- Targeted systems (insects, frogs, bats, birds, mammals, others);
- Targeted terrains (soil, freshwater, ocean, terrestrial, atmospheric);
- Object tracking and movement ecology;
- Few-shot learning;
- Autonomous or semi-autonomous systems;
- Edge computing and onboard processing;
- Low-power embedded hardware;
- Connectivity networks for sensor communication (e.g., 3G/4G, LoRa, mesh, satellite);
- Open hardware / open-source software;
- Distributed sensor networks;
- Renewable energy sources for autonomous deployments;
- Biodegradable or sustainable sensing systems;
- Large-scale data archiving;
- Statistical analyses and modeling for sensor data;
- Deployment strategies and sensing simulations;
- Ethics and privacy.
Dr. Becky Heath
Dr. Sarab Singh Sethi
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- biodiversity
- ecological monitoring
- wildlife monitoring
- conservation technology
- environment
- embedded systems
- AI
- robotics
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