Advances in Cropland Abandonment Monitoring

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Land – Observation and Monitoring".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2024) | Viewed by 2434

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Research Center of Forestry Remote Sensing & Information Engineering, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha 410004, China
Interests: land use/land cover; wetland; cropland; urban forestry; climate change; carbon storage

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Research Center of Forestry Remote Sensing & Information Engineering, Central South University of Forestry and Technology, Changsha 410004, China
Interests: land use/land cover; remote sensing; climate change; forest; carbon storage

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, Changsha University of Science & Technology, Changsha 410114, China
Interests: land use/land cover; wetland; hydrology; carbon storage; ecosystem modeling; ecological risk assessment; climate change

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Cropland is the foundation and guarantee for the survival of all human beings, and it is the cornerstone for the stability of the country. However, reductions in rural populations during urbanization and industrialization often results in the marginalization of cropland in marginal areas, which leads to large-scale abandonment of marginal land. Large-scale cropland abandonment is closely related to food security, and it also has an impact on biodiversity, soil quality, carbon cycle and the ecological environment. Currently, cropland abandonment has become one of the important directions of LUCC (Land Use and Land Cover Change) research. Therefore, it is of great importance to carry out accurate monitoring of abandoned arable land in order to accurately grasp information on the quantity and spatial distribution of abandoned arable land, as well as to explore its driving factors for arable land conservation strategies. This Special Issue focuses on new technologies for monitoring and identifying cropland abandonment, the spatial distribution and spatiotemporal evolution of cropland abandonment, and the analysis of ecological and environmental changes brought about by cropland abandonment and its driving mechanisms.

This Special Issue includes, but is not limited to, the following topics of interest:

  • Global and regional cropland abandonment monitoring;
  • Remote sensing and modeling of the cropland abandonment;
  • Land use/land cover change;
  • Environmental changes due to cropland abandonment;
  • Spatiotemporal evolution of cropland and driving mechanisms.

Dr. Meng Zhang
Prof. Dr. Hui Lin
Dr. Jianbo Tan
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.

Keywords

  • cropland abandonment
  • land use/land cover change
  • spatiotemporal evolution
  • environmental change
  • driving mechanism
  • remote sensing
  • modeling

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

24 pages, 10767 KiB  
Article
Improved Cropland Abandonment Detection with Deep Learning Vision Transformer (DL-ViT) and Multiple Vegetation Indices
by Mannan Karim, Jiqiu Deng, Muhammad Ayoub, Wuzhou Dong, Baoyi Zhang, Muhammad Shahzad Yousaf, Yasir Ali Bhutto and Muhammad Ishfaque
Land 2023, 12(10), 1926; https://doi.org/10.3390/land12101926 - 16 Oct 2023
Viewed by 1790
Abstract
Cropland abandonment is a worldwide problem that threatens food security and has significant consequences for the sustainable growth of the economy, society, and the natural ecosystem. However, detecting and mapping abandoned lands is challenging due to their diverse characteristics, like varying vegetation cover, [...] Read more.
Cropland abandonment is a worldwide problem that threatens food security and has significant consequences for the sustainable growth of the economy, society, and the natural ecosystem. However, detecting and mapping abandoned lands is challenging due to their diverse characteristics, like varying vegetation cover, spectral reflectance, and spatial patterns. To overcome these challenges, we employed Gaofen-6 (GF-6) imagery in conjunction with a Vision Transformer (ViT) model, harnessing self-attention and multi-scale feature learning to significantly enhance our ability to accurately and efficiently classify land covers. In Mianchi County, China, the study reveals that approximately 385 hectares of cropland (about 2.2% of the total cropland) were abandoned between 2019 and 2023. The highest annual abandonment occurred in 2021, with 214 hectares, followed by 170 hectares in 2023. The primary reason for the abandonment was the transformation of cropland into excavation activities, barren lands, and roadside greenways. The ViT’s performance peaked when multiple vegetation indices (VIs) were integrated into the GF-6 bands, resulting in the highest achieved results (F1 score = 0.89 and OA = 0.94). Our study represents an innovative approach by integrating ViT with 8 m multiband composite GF-6 imagery for precise identification and analysis of short-term cropland abandonment patterns, marking a distinct contribution compared to previous research. Moreover, our findings have broader implications for effective land use management, resource optimization, and addressing complex challenges in the field. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Cropland Abandonment Monitoring)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop