Remote Sensing-Guided Land-Use Optimization for Carbon Neutrality

Dear Colleagues,

Understanding land use patterns and their temporal dynamics is critical for effective climate change mitigation. Sustainable land management can substantially contribute to mitigation efforts by enhancing terrestrial carbon sinks and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The success of global warming mitigation strategies depends not only on coordinated actions at both global and local scales but also on the availability of accurate, timely, and spatially explicit information about the systems being managed. In this regard, remote sensing serves as a vital source of geospatial data, enabling more informed decision-making in support of a sustainable and climate-adapted future.

Digital space remote sensing for environmental monitoring emerged in the 1970s as a powerful instrument for land use mapping, enabling researchers and planners to efficiently acquire spatial data and monitor changes over time. Its application in climate-aligned land use mapping requires a synergistic approach that integrates high-resolution and multi-temporal spatial data, an understanding of land–climate–society interactions, advanced computational methods, and insights into land use change dynamics. Although advances in remote sensing technology have greatly improved our capacity to monitor land use and associated ecological variables, there remain critical gaps in the comprehensive understanding and integration needed for effective climate impact management.

In this Special Issue, manuscripts are expected to explore the potential of diverse data sources and sensor characteristics, as well as assess the performance of modern classification algorithms and change detection techniques. Contributions that examine how remote sensing can be linked with climate scenarios to model land use development or risk under future conditions are also encouraged.

Research reporting on the role of remote sensing in monitoring, modelling, reporting, and verification (MRV) of changes in aboveground biomass and soil carbon proxies, particularly in the context of climate-related land use policies such as REDD, LULUCF, UAST accounting, is especially welcome. Studies addressing the use of remote sensing to identify opportunities for reforestation, afforestation, wetland restoration, regenerative agriculture, sustainable urban planning, or urban adaptation for climate and energy are also of high interest.

Furthermore, submissions that describe methodologies for implementing new European Union legal requirements for monitoring and reporting in the LULUCF and UAST sectors—particularly using geographically explicit land use conversion data—are strongly encouraged.

Prof. Dr. Sébastien Gadal
Prof. Dr. Gintautas Mozgeris
Guest Editors

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