Dear Colleagues,

The Amazon and Cerrado (Brazilian savannah) biomes have long been affected by a colonization process that has impacted natural resources and local populations. In this regard, the scientific community has mainly pointed out the severe effects of deforestation and anthropization of major rivers (mainly through the construction of large hydroelectric dams) on biodiversity and climate change. This is especially true for the Amazon basin ecosystems, which are now considered to be in transition to a disturbance-dominated regime, including changing energy and water cycles (Davidson et al., 2012). In particular, the Southern and Eastern portions of the Amazon basin hold an intense agricultural frontier at the transition between the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. Large‐scale landscape modification in the Brazilian Cerrado is altering the hydrology and affecting carbon stocks and fluxes, as well as biodiversity (Klink and Machado 2005). Despite this, the last decade has also been characterized by important governance efforts to limit the environmental impacts of anthropogenic activities. For example, efficient command-and-control policies combined with market-oriented forms of regulation have enabled the rapid reduction of deforestation rates in the Amazon and Cerrado. Although these recent improvements may be put into question in a period of political and economic crisis, they testify to significant changes towards a development model that will conciliate economic development and environmental conservation. In this regard, specific regions on the Amazon and the Cerrado agricultural frontiers remain very dynamic.

Monitoring and understanding these new dynamics thus represents a challenge for the remote sensing community, which needs to adapt its practices and techniques to the detection of finer forms of change in the Amazon and the Cerrado. In particular, we wish to place special emphasis on (1) fine environmental changes related to forest degradation, the multiplication of dams, irrigation practices, infrastructure development and urbanization; and on (2) actions to reduce these environmental impacts through the adoption of new agricultural practices (e.g. crop–pasture–forestry integration, no-tillage, crop rotation, pasture restauration) and reforestation efforts (especially in riverine forests and private legal reserves under the frame of the implementation of the Brazil's National Environmental Registry of Rural Properties, CAR). In this regard, we will pay special attention to the role of landscapes in maintaining essential ecosystem services such as food or timber provision, soil fertility, biodiversity preservation and climate regulation.

To address these issues, experts can benefit from a wide range of data (from airborne to satellite images) produced by different sensors at various spatio-temporal scales and for diverse applications, e.g. land use mapping, climate and hydrology monitoring. In addition, various remote sensing-based land cover/use maps have also been released recently and their potential to monitor such changes remains unexplored to date.

This Special Issue, "Assessing changes in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes by remote sensing”, will call for original papers that demonstrate the potential of remote sensing data and remote sensing-based products to monitor fine changes in those biomes. The list below provides a general (but not exhaustive) overview of the topics that are solicited for this Special Issue:

• Transdisciplinary studies focusing on the relationships between vegetation dynamics, climate, water and societies;
• Transnational studies
• Studies with a special interest in ecotone areas (e.g. transition between forest and Cerrado areas);
• Studies focusing on solutions implemented to improve land use sustainability
• Smart landscapes to maintain ecosystem services in the Amazon

Dr. Damien Arvor
Dr. Valéry Gond
Dr. Claudio Almeida
Dr. Mateus Batistella
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• Land use and land cover change 
• Climate change
• Multi-source remote sensing 
• Land use sustainability
• Landscape approach