Remote Sensing for EU Habitats Directive Application
A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2019) | Viewed by 3305
Special Issue Editors
Interests: remote sensing; environmental modeling; wetlands; image analysis
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The Habitat Directive (92/43/EEC) determines the rules for plant biodiversity conservation in Europe, with the requirements for natural habitats’ conservation status being updated every 6 years since 1995. However, the major current issues for its applicability in each member state are still related to: (1) The definition and interpretation of the 233 habitat types listed in Annex I of the Habitat Directive, and (2) the mapping of habitat types on national coverage.
Recent advances in numerical analysis of vegetation data and ecological modeling, as well as the extensive availability of Earth Observation data with high temporal and spatial resolutions, provide a promising avenue for an operational implementation of the Habitat Directive. On one hand, predictive modeling of plant species and communities is an approach rapidly increasing in popularity in European biogeographical regions. On the other hand, new low-cost or free satellite time-series with high spatial and spectral resolutions, such as Sentinel-1/2 data, are available to monitor natural habitats. Links between remote sensing and ecological research communities are now strengthening with the integration of reference vegetation databases (European Vegetation Archive, VegFrance, etc.) in remote-sensing-based models (machine learning classification, fuzzy approach, optimal transport approach, time-series classifiers, etc.).
In this context, the French Ministry of the Environment launched the CarHAB program, which aims to map terrestrial natural habitats over national territory using reference vegetation data and Earth Observation images. In this Special Issue, we invite original contributions in one or more of the topics below. Both specific cases and comparative studies carried out in European regions and their overseas territories are encouraged. Typical papers are expected to address the following topics:
- Mapping and monitoring of habitat conservation status;
- Integrating satellite data in ecosystem modeling;
- Multiscale analysis (plant species/vegetal associations/habitats/vegetation series);
- Development of vegetation typologies;
- Reproducibility of satellite-based classification models;
- Integrating vegetation reference data in satellite images classification (unbalanced classes, weak sampling, temporal shifts, etc.).
Prof. Laurence Hubert-Moy
Dr. Sébastien Rapinel
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- Plant communities
- Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs)
- Ecological Modelling
- Big data
- Uncertainty
- National mapping
- Change detection
- Long-term monitoring
- Remote sensing
- Satellite time-series
- Conservation status
- Natura 2000
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