We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Chuanrong (Cindy) Zhang has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the newly established Section “Land Innovations – Data and Machine Learning” in Land (ISSN 2073-445X, IF 3.398).

Prof. Dr. Chuanrong (Cindy) Zhang received the Ph.D. in geography from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 2004. She is currently a professor at the Department of Geography & Center of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs. Prof. Dr. Zhang is a broadly trained geographer with substantive interests in geospatial technologies. Her research is interdisciplinary. In particular, her research concentrates on geographical information science (GIS), remote sensing, geo-spatial statistics, geocomputation, GIS cyberinfrastructure, and their applications in land-use/cover studies, climate change, managing disasters and natural resources, landscape ecology, environmental planning, as well as transportation studies. She has published articles in leading journals on GIS, geography, remote sensing, soil, and environmental studies. She has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings since 2003. She published her monograph titled Geospatial Semantic Web as the first author with Springer in 2015. Her work has been supported by different prestigious agents such as the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. She has served as the committee chair or member for several international or national organizations in the geospatial community such as the AAG (Association of American Geographers), CPGIS (The International Association of Chinese Professionals in GIS), and UCGIS (University Consortium for Geographic Information Science). She received the UCGIS/ESRI (University Consortium for Geographic Information Science/Environmental Systems Research Institute) Junior Faculty Award in 2009 and became an NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) CyberGIS Fellow in 2014.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Chuanrong Zhang, who shared her vision for the Section with us as well as her views of the research area:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take on the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?

Many of the central challenges of the 21st century are tied to our land. For example, receding glaciers, loss of species’ habitats, growing inequalities, resource depletion, population migration, rising disasters, and climate change. Land is the journal in which to publish important interdisciplinary research on land, which has the potential to contribute greatly to efforts to solve these challenges. The journal has gained more attention in various fields and has had a growing impact across the sciences in recent years. As a geographer, I have research interests in common with the journal. My recent research focuses on investigating new technologies in GIS, remote sensing, and spatial statistics to process, analyze, and represent geographical data, which match the aims and scope of the journal well.

2. What is your vision for the Section?

The “Land Innovations – Data and Machine Learning” Section includes, but is not limited to, frontiers of research in spatial data science for obtaining, processing, analyzing, harnessing, and visualizing social, economic, environmental, and other data related to Land. Geospatial artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for dealing with spatial big data, including remotely sensed data and social media data, are particularly welcome.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?

The future of research on land data and machine learning is exciting. The future of research will move beyond proof-of-concept demonstrations and applications of big data and machine learning techniques. The future of research may involve investigations that draw on diverse perspectives and different types of data as well as emphasize integrated approaches and model-driven data analytics approaches, which are important in addressing many research problems and may promote large-scale collaborations.

4. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?

As the Internet has enabled low-cost distribution of digital content, the development of open access will probably gain increasing acceptance and become more popular in the future. More and more journals will become open access journals.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Chuanrong Zhang to her new role as Section Editor-in-Chief, and we look forward to her leading Land to many more milestones.