Dear Colleagues,

Environmental changes define the disturbances caused to the environment by human influences or due to natural imbalances. Any changes to the environment adversely affect biodiversity and can disrupt the equilibrium between nature and humans. Changes to the environment can occur due to various natural processes such as a volcanic eruption, forest fire, soil erosion, earthquakes, etc. and due to various human activities such as pollution, climate change, deforestation, and many more. These drastic changes with the environment result in significant loss of various wild animal habitats and the extinction of flora and fauna at a rapid rate across the world. Other factors such as land cover and land-use changes, have raised the level of environmental stress, with fluctuating climatic conditions, unstable biodiversity, increased carbon emission, water scarcity, etc. This critically affects the stability of the natural environment.

In general, environmental changes can have an adverse effect on society, with large-scale imbalance between physical, chemical, biological and geological processes. Here, effective loss of nutrients in the soil, overexploitation of crude oil, overfishing, plastic littering, and inhabiting dry rivers and farmlands are the direct concerns of environmental change. Similarly, greenhouse gas emissions, rise in the sea levels, and extinction of vital species of fauna have increased in recent years due to the improper management of environmental changes. Even though environmental changes, which happen naturally, are inevitable, it is necessary to conserve and protect the environment with sustainable policy and planning measures. Such sustainable policies for the environment could bring forth change in terms of an improved quality of life, governance, livelihoods, economy, and infrastructure.

Sustainability can be described as the concept of meeting the present needs (social, economic, and environmental) of the environment without compromising future needs. Moreover, environmental policy acts as a tool for governmental organizations to handle and solve environmental problems. Since several environmental aspects must be addressed in such a policy, formulating individual policies for every aspect reduces uncertainty and improves flexible environmental planning and sustainable growth. Planning and establishing environmental policies to ensure sustainable availability, consumption, and affordability of water, energy, and other resources without degrading any ecosystem is considered an important goal for the current changing environment. This Special Issue on “Environmental Change Management with Sustainable Policy and Planning Measures” invites contributions from researchers across the globe to suggest, discuss, and address challenges and opportunities in formulating an effective policy in the planning of a sustainable environment.

The topics of interest for the Special Issue include but are not limited to the following:

• Sustainable policies and strategy plans to effectively deal with environmental change adaption and mitigation processes;
• Advances in atmospheric science for environmental change management and prevention measures;
• Fire in the environment, effective strategic plans to prevention, causes, impacts, and management;
• Effective measures to water and air quality management in urban areas;
• Sustainable developments in agriculture to prevent environmental changes and its consequences;
• Advances in computing technologies such as internet of things (IoT), remote sensing, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence in environmental monitoring and management processes;
• Sustainable management practices to increases air quality measures with reduced harmful gases;
• Sustainable resource use to increase soil carbon sequestration;
• Innovative technologies to prevent land, air, and water pollution and sustainable developments;
• Advances sustainable planning and strategy measures to control climate change, uncertainty, and mitigation measures;
• New trend in environmental governance to soil degradation and restoration processes;
• Frontiers in urban drainage management and environmental welfare.

Prof. Dr. Ching-Hsien Hsu
Dr. Amir H. Alavi
Dr. He Li
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. Environments 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 1800 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.