Computer Vision-Based Monitoring of Aquatic Ecosystems Across Marine and Freshwater Environments
A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Biodiversity and Functionality of Aquatic Ecosystems".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 September 2026 | Viewed by 12
Special Issue Editors
Interests: marine remote sensing; photogrammetry; aquatic ecological monitoring; benthic mapping; coral reef monitoring; UAV applications; deep learning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: remote sensing; coral reef monitoring; underwater image processing; photogrammetry; aquatic ecological monitoring; IoT for aquatic ecologial monitoring
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Aquatic ecosystems, including oceans, lakes, rivers, and coastal waters, play a critical role in global biodiversity, food security, and ecosystem services. However, effective monitoring and management of aquatic organisms remain challenging due to complex environments, limited accessibility, and high monitoring costs. Recent advances in computer vision and artificial intelligence, combined with multi-platform remote sensing technologies, offer new opportunities for scalable, cost-effective, and high-resolution ecological monitoring across diverse water bodies.
This Special Issue aims to highlight state-of-the-art computer vision applications for monitoring aquatic organisms across the hydrosphere, including marine, freshwater, and transitional water environments. We particularly focus on vision-based analysis of aquatic animals, aquatic plants, benthic organisms, and habitat structures using advanced methods such as object detection, semantic and instance segmentation, image enhancement, and multimodal data fusion. These techniques enable accurate species detection, abundance estimation, behavior analysis, habitat mapping, and long-term ecological assessment.
The Special Issue welcomes studies leveraging diverse data sources, including underwater imagery, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), manned aircraft, and satellite observations. Contributions may address methodological innovations, system development, field applications, and integrated monitoring frameworks that support sustainable aquatic resource management, biodiversity conservation, and environmental assessment. By bridging computer vision, remote sensing, and aquatic ecology, this Special Issue seeks to advance intelligent monitoring solutions that enhance our ability to observe, understand, and sustainably manage aquatic ecosystems under increasing environmental pressures.
Dr. Fan Zhao
Dr. Jiaqi Wang
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- computer vision
- aquatic ecosystem monitoring
- underwater imagery
- unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
- object detection and image segmentation
- deep learning
- multi-platform remote sensing
- biodiversity and ecological assessment
- sustainable water management
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