Dear Colleagues,

Soils constitute one of the most critical natural resources and maintaining their health is vital for agricultural development and ecological sustainability, providing many crucial ecosystem services. Soils are sites of complex and key processes, such as soil respiration, which plays an important role in global carbon cycling as well as other nutrient cycles. However, erosion, salinization, desertification, and pollution are some of the main processes affecting soil degradation, and form only part of the land degradation processes. Therefore, land degradation encompasses all negative changes in the capacity of the ecosystem to provide goods and services where biological and water processes as well as land-related social and economic dependence will determine soil conditions and health. Apart from natural causes, human activities such as inadequate land management practices and overexploitation of natural resources will contribute to changes of soils and land ecosystems and often lead to their degradation.

Advances in imaging spectroscopy are of great use for characterizing and monitoring these types of processes, due to the technique’s capacity to accurately characterize Earth surface composition, particularly in agricultural and arid lands as well as areas where disturbed soil surfaces are exposed. This includes using new proximal sensing methods and sensor technologies with high spatial and temporal resolutions and advanced remote sensing data processing capacities to track and detect changes over space and time.

This Special Issue aims to present new and/or innovative methods/approaches/products to characterize and monitor soil and land degradation processes using proximal and remote sensing data. We welcome the submission of original manuscripts that use different types of available remotely sensed data, from field to satellite-borne sensors, for determining the different degradation processes in drylands and agricultural regions of the world. Submissions using new spaceborne imaging spectroscopy sensors, or multiple scales and time series data together with field observations and laboratory measurements are encouraged.

Dr. Thomas Schmid
Prof. Dr. Sabine Chabrillat
Dr. Robert Milewski
Dr. Daniel Žížala
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. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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.

• Soil degradation
• Land degradation
• Ecosystem services
• Soil respiration
• Imaging spectroscopy
• Proximal sensing
• Hyperspectral
• Multispectral
• Time series
• Mapping