Sensors and Smart Sensing of Agricultural Land Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Agricultural land systems are essential to human beings and provide the major biophysical basis for sustaining food production. Over the past few decades, the unprecedented growth of both the economy and the population has led to diverse agricultural land use practices, globally varying from swidden cultivation to multi-cropping, from crop/variety choices to intensified management. As a result, agricultural land systems have experienced rapid changes or modifications in their land uses, functions and services, which greatly impact their abilities of either providing more land resources for food production, using existing land more efficiently, or maximizing output of per unit of land.

Remote sensing technologies provide an innovative means for mapping, monitoring and modeling agricultural land systems. Recent development of new satellite and aerial-borne sensors, vehicle or tractor-based near-sensing devices, and in situ wireless sensor networks provides a wealth of data for supporting smart sensing and proper management of agricultural land systems. However, to integrate and optimize these multi-platforms, multi-sensors and multi-scales data, new concepts, processing algorithms and application systems are necessarily needed, which requires many innovations in the theory and practice of agricultural remote sensing.

This Special Issue, edited by the 3^rd Global Land Project Open Science Meeting held in Beijing 24^–27 October, 2016, is dedicated to communicate latest progresses in remote sensors and its application in agricultural land systems, to look at some key theoretical and technical issues in this field, and to offer some case studies worldwide demonstrating the experience, utility, and models for agricultural land systems monitoring at different scales. Original contributions looking at integration of multi-sensors, possibly spanning long time periods, and/or large geographical extents are especially encouraged.

Prof. Dr. Huajun Tang
Prof. Dr. Wenbin Wu
Prof. Dr. Yun Shi
Guest Editors

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