Remote Sensing of Grassland Ecosystem

Dear Colleagues,

Grassland covers 51% of the world’s land surface, and is among the most prominent biogeographic regions on the Earth for human welfare and livestock. The alpine pasture parts of grasslands are pronounced areas of high-altitude ecosystems, and are important in terms of climate change. The distribution of alpine pastures makes them fragile and sensitive to climate change, in order to ensure sustainable alpine pasture management. Nutrient rich grasslands and herbaceous vegetation play an important role in determining the grazing patterns of livestock, distribution of herbivore population, interlinkages with other trophic levels, and overall ecosystem health and stability. Common practices for detecting grass canopy properties, such as leaf area index, and biomass and chlorophyll content, require detailed sampling, biomass removal, and field settings. Because of the laborious job and inadequate data that is not representative of the population spatially, surveying and mapping techniques, like remote sensing, for estimating grass canopy properties in varying spatial and temporal scales, are therefore critical for a better understanding of grassland productivity, livestock population, and in response to the changing climate system, among other biophysical attributes.

Satellite derived information can provide information to meet the requirements, through the involvement of all actors (livestock farmers and herdsmen/grazers; pastoral systems; and conservation specialists, researchers, and the mangers of protected areas). For these reasons, more research is warranted in order to better understand the capabilities and limits of the different sensor platforms and the retrieval algorithms for the inventory, monitoring, and management of grassland resources. This Special Issue is focused on advancing the range of remote sensing-based techniques for grassland characteristics, covering a wide variety of applications like carbon sequestration, vegetation–climate feedbacks, forage production, and so, but they are not limited to sites, data, and scales.

We would like to invite you to submit articles about your recent research with respect to the following topics under three broad challenges.

Challenge 1: In laboratory/field scale

• Statistical-based grass canopy properties (e.g., handheld, UAV, airborne campaigns, etc.)—methods and evaluations.
• Physical-based radiative transfer model of grass structure and biochemistry.
• Flux tower measurements of grassland ecosystems.

Challenge 2: In satellite scale

• Optical remote sensing of the grass canopy structure (e.g., LAI and biomass) and biochemical (Chlorophyll), methods and evaluations (e.g., Landsat-8 OLI and Sentinel-2/-3), and future missions (e.g., EnMap, HyspIRI).
• Radar remote sensing of grass canopy structure—methods and evaluations.
• Remote sensing of varying treatments (fertilizers) and management (irrigation and pest infestation, fire/wildfire) to grass canopies.
• Application of new algorithms to biomass/carbon dynamics estimation in grasslands (e.g., alpine prairie).
• Comparison and evaluation of different remote sensing methods and vegetation indices sensitive to grassland properties.

Challenge 3: Earth System Models

• Prediction of grass gross primary productivity (GPP) in Earth system models’ (ESMs) framework.
• Inter-comparison between satellite derived and ESM predictions.

Review or commentary articles covering one or more of these topics are also welcome.

Dr. Ramesh K. Ningthoujam
Prof. Pawan K Joshi
Prof. Parth Sarathi Roy
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.