Remote Sensing in Coastal Vegetation Monitoring

Dear Colleagues,

Short- and long-term monitoring of coastal vegetation continues to be a challenge, yet these highly diverse ecosystems are critically important for protecting increasingly vulnerable coastlines, especially in the face of growing pressures from climate and other human-induced changes. Traditional field-based vegetation sampling provides essential information at fine spatio-temporal scales; however, the discrete nature of the data often precludes observing landscape-level characteristics and trends. Furthermore, coastal ecosystems typically have site access constraints that make them difficult to monitor using traditional methods. Thus, important information may be missed, resulting in knowledge gaps surrounding monitoring. Recent improvements in remote sensing technology offer ways to help overcome challenges with monitoring coastal vegetation while better understanding emerging topics, such as ecological restoration, resilience, climate change, and storm-related impacts. These technological improvements span considerable gains in spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions across active and passive sensors (e.g., multispectral and hyperspectral imagers and LiDAR sensors) as well as platforms (e.g., satellite as well as manned and unmanned aircraft).

The aim of the Special Issue is to highlight studies covering a range of active and passive sensors and platforms and analytical methods for use in monitoring coastal vegetation through estimation of characteristics, such as habitat type or species composition, changes or trends, stress or condition, physical structure, and dynamics. Topics may address a variety of issues or approaches, such as comparative analyses (e.g., comparison of different sensors, data types, or analytical methods), new data or techniques (e.g., artificial intelligence), data integration or fusion (e.g., combining different data types), and technical improvements, challenges, or limitations for using remotely sensed data or methods. Articles may address, but are not limited to, the following topics: 

• Coastal vegetation or habitat characterization;
• Coastal habitat trend or change analysis;
• Physical structure assessment of coastal vegetation;
• Coastal wetland vegetation pattern or dynamic analysis;
• Coastal restoration monitoring;
• Coastal storm impacts;
• Coastal resilience or vulnerability;
• Natural and nature-based solutions;
• Prediction or modeling of coastal systems;
• Coastal vegetation stress or condition assessment.

Dr. Glenn M. Suir
Guest Editor

Molly Reif
Guest Editor Assistant

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. Remote Sensing 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 2700 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.

• coastal wetlands
• coastal dune vegetation
• coastal vegetation change
• coastal vegetation monitoring
• coastal restoration monitoring
• spectral and structure analysis of coastal vegetation