Remote Sensing in Coastal Water Environment Monitoring

Dear Colleagues,

Coastal waters play an important role in ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles, exerting influences on the erosion and biotic community of the coastal fringe. As feedback of the complex interactions among hydrodynamics, sediment transport, and morphodynamics, the suspended sediment and chlorophyll a concentration levels that can affect the light propagation in coastal water and the transportation of nutrients and pollutants. At the same time, coastal land areas are vulnerable to the combined effects from subsidence- and climate-induced sea level rise (SLR), leading to public safety and health threats such as flooding, wetland loss, and infrastructure damage. However, high spatiotemporal resolution and accurate data of the coastal geographic environment are not always readily available, which has limited our further understanding of this critical zone. Therefore, to sustain their ecological and social roles, it is critical to identify the spatiotemporal characteristics of coastal environments and their response mechanisms to human activities and climate change.

Constantly monitoring the coastal water environments by remote sensing can help with detecting spatiotemporal change and addressing environmental problems at the full stage, such as coastal subsidence, tidal wetlands, suspended sediment concentration (SSC), sea surface salinity (SSS), sea surface temperature (SST), chlorophyll a concentration, sea level rise, and wind speed in coastal areas. However, the long time series patterns in estuary and coastal areas are not presently clear around the world. Thus, we have a pressing need to understand how such coastal waters are responding to the SLR and human activities through better coastal measurements, mapping, and modeling.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to use integrated remote sensing techniques to extract high-resolution, accurate information and detect changes in the coastal water environment, thereby understanding its drivers. The coastal expert community is expected to answer questions about the potential impacts of different sea-level rise scenarios on coastal zones and assess the associated environmental vulnerability. The intersection of disciplines, observations, and datasets is the focus, with the aim of translating these into information about the spatio-temporal characteristics, such as the expression of sediment imbalances and ecosystem adjustments, drivers of human activities, levels of exposure, and adaptation to hazards. Remote sensing methods and observations from in situ, airborne, and spaceborne platforms provide large-scale, multispectral/hyperspectral, full-polarized, high spatiotemporal resolution data of coastal waters. This Special Issue will facilitate an informed debate among scientists and stakeholders regarding the coastal water environments affected by global climate change and human activities.

The potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• coastal remote sensing;
• coastal erosion;
• coastal geomorphology;
• coastal hazards;
• coastal inundation;
• coastal subsidence;
• coastal water quality;
• suspended sediment concentration (SSC);
• sea surface salinity (SSS);
• sea surface temperature (SST);
• chlorophyll a concentration;
• tidal wetlands;
• tidal channes;
• tidal flats;
• coral reef;
• sea level rise;
• flooding risks;
• land–sea surface processes;
• hyperspectral remote sensing;
• radar remote sensing
• GNSS-R;
• wetland hydrological ecology;
• climate change;
• human activies;
• data fusion;
• machine learning;
• deep learning.

Dr. Peng Li
Dr. Fengqin Yan
Guest Editors

Dr. Xiuling Zuo
Guest Editor Assistant

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• coastal remote sensing
• coastal change detection
• coastal subsidence
• coastal flooding
• coastal geomorphology
• coastal wetlands
• tidal flats
• coastal environmental vulnerability
• coastal processes and landforms
• hyperspectral remote sensing
• radar remote sensing
• machine learning
• data fusion
• climate change
• human activities