Challenges and Future Trends in Land Cover/Use Monitoring

Dear Colleagues,

A new generation of remote sensing instruments mounted on-board drones, aerial and space vectors, which guarantee improved temporal sampling and enhanced spatial resolutions of collected data, has emerged in recent years. In this context, developing novel approaches for the effective processing of long-term sequences of remotely sensed data and the consolidation of traditional Earth observation methods is of great relevance. The exploitation of Earth observation methodologies is a common practice in the scientific community today. It allows researchers to conduct “in-depth” investigations regarding a vast amount of natural and anthropogenic phenomena leading to the deterioration of or changes in the Earth’s surface, soil erosion, vegetation disturbances and crop cover changes, with implications on agroforestry, agriculture, carbon farming, etc. Using novel high computing paradigms and developing new methods for integrating information derived from different sets of remotely sensed images acquired at complementary frequency bands also represent a new, challenging frontier in Earth observation techniques. Optical, microwave synthetic aperture radar and hyper-spectral data products are fostered. Several new RS satellite programs are being scheduled and deployed, and many new methods are being developed in concert. Constellations of satellite sensors working from microwave to optical wavelengths are systematically used to monitor land cover/use changes.

This Special Issue aims at collecting papers (original research articles and review papers) that provide insights into land monitoring.

This Special Issue welcomes manuscripts that link the following themes:
(1) High-resolution land mapping.
(2) Land cover hyperspectral imaging.
(3) Land data multi-source registration and fusion.
(4) Land use information/feature extraction.
(5) Land data pixel-level classification.
(6) Land change detection.
(7) High-performance computing.
(8) Synergic use of SAR and optical data for agricultural applications and/or for studying land use and land cover in imaged scenes.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Antonio Pepe
Dr. Francesco Falabella
Dr. Rosa Coluzzi
Dr. Monika Przeor
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2600 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.

• land monitoring
• land mapping
• land cover
• land use
• land classification
• land change detection
• information fusion
• multi-source registration
• spectral imaging
• machine learning
• optical and microwave data