Advances in Protected Area Monitoring and Management towards Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Sustainbility aims to gather high-quality original research articles, reviews, and technical notes on “Advances in Protected Area Monitoring and Management towards Sustainability”.

Protected Areas cover 15% of the land worldwide. Protected Areas play a crucial role in preserving biodiversity, maintaining natural landscapes, storing forest carbon, water conservation, and providing other environmental services. Some Protected Areas also hold great socio-cultural value among local communities. Multiple-use Protected Areas explicitly allow for human presence and environmentally sustainable activities. Therefore, Protected Areas may provide economic incentives for conservation where they sustain local livelihoods. Research and education also greatly benefit from the establishment of Protected Areas.

At the same time, human activities in Protected Areas may impact on ecosystem parameters and the residing flora and fauna. It is therefore critical to manage and monitor human use and impacts. Over the past decade, the monitoring of people and use of Protected Areas has seen rapid advancements and increased our capacity to measure the numbers, profiles, perceptions, motivations and expectations of stakeholders, and other critical measurements, for instance on environmental impacts. This Special Issue seeks submissions that answer questions on the monitoring and management of Protected Areas in relation to the following:

• Marine Protected Areas issues and challenges;
• Criteria, indicators, and using models for monitoring ecosystem services;
• Stakeholder and governance conflicts;
• Adaptive management and co-management;
• Ecotourism sustainability;
• Recreation opportunities;
• Shrinking national budgets allocated for Protected Areas;
• Spatial planning and connectivity conservation;
• Applying remote sensing and big data analysis;
• Climate change;
• Land use and land cover change;
• Vegetation and wildlife biodiversity;
• Water conservation.

The above points, along with many more, comprise the “keyword pad” for this Special Issue. We invite scientists from around the world to submit papers on any of these topics to contribute research on recent trends and to elicit dialogue on their effectiveness as tools for the sustainable use of Protected Areas. Articles addressing case studies, analytical methods, emerging trends, original research, and reviews are welcome.

Dr. Seyed Mohammad Moein Sadeghi
Dr. Isabelle Wolf
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. Sustainability 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 2400 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.