Remote sensing has been successfully applied in monitoring of protected areas around the world. With intensified impacts of climate and environmental change, protected areas become increasingly important to serve as indicators of and buffers against the impacts of the disturbances. Remote sensing plays an irreplaceable role in this frontline of challenges. The subjects and contents of the articles collected in this book reflect the state-of-the-art applications of remote sensing for capturing dynamics of environmental and ecological variations of the protected areas. The examples include revealing the level, growth rate, trend, and distribution pattern of the night-time light of global protected areas; quantifying the energy budget, water cycle, and carbon sink over the Three-River Headwaters Region in the hinterland of the Tibetan Plateau; monitoring wetland change in a cross-boundary zone between Northeast China and the Russian Far East; and monitoring applications and change analyses in protected areas of boreal forests, dryland shrubs, coastal salt marshes, large lakes, and temperate semi-humid to semi-arid transitional agricultural regions, using a variety of sensor data with innovative approaches. Also included in this collection is a bibliometric analysis that suggests the intellectual structure in remote sensing of protected areas from the perspective of journal publications.

The ability to anticipate the impacts of global environmental changes on natural resources is fundamental to designing appropriate and optimised adaptation and mitigation strategies. However, this requires the scientific community to have access to reliable, large-scale information on spatio-temporal changes in the distribution of abiotic conditions and on the distribution, structure, composition, and functioning of ecosystems. Satellite remote sensing can provide access to some of this fundamental data by offering repeatable, standardised, and verifiable information that is directly relevant to the monitoring and management of our natural capital. This book demonstrates how ecological knowledge and satellite-based information can be effectively combined to address a wide array of current natural resource management needs. By focusing on concrete applied examples in both the marine and terrestrial realms, it will help pave the way for developing enhanced levels of collaboration between the ecological and remote sensing communities, as well as shaping their future research directions. Satellite Remote Sensing and the Management of Natural Resources is primarily aimed at ecologists and remote sensing specialists, as well as policy makers and practitioners in the fields of conservation biology, biodiversity monitoring, and natural resource management.

Explains how satellite remote sensing informs and helps deliver successful conservation management through case studies, which highlight practitioner experience.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have already become an affordable and cost-efficient tool to quickly map a targeted area for many emerging applications in the arena of ecological monitoring and biodiversity conservation. Managers, owners, companies, and scientists are using professional drones equipped with high-resolution visible, multispectral, or thermal cameras to assess the state of ecosystems, the effect of disturbances, or the dynamics and changes within biological communities inter alia. We are now at a tipping point on the use of drones for these type of applications over natural areas. UAV missions are increasing but most of them are testing applicability. It is time now to move to frequent revisiting missions, aiding in the retrieval of important biophysical parameters in ecosystems or mapping species distributions. This Special Issue shows UAV applications contributing to a better understanding of biodiversity and ecosystem status, threats, changes, and trends. It documents the enhancement of knowledge in ecological integrity parameters mapping, long-term ecological monitoring based on drones, mapping of alien species spread and distribution, upscaling ecological variables from drone to satellite images: methods and approaches, rapid risk and disturbance assessment using drones, mapping albedo with UAVs, wildlife tracking, bird colony and chimpanzee nest mapping, habitat mapping and monitoring, and a review on drones for conservation in protected areas.

Remote sensing stands as the defining technology in our ability to monitor coral reefs, as well as their biophysical properties and associated processes, at regional to global scales. With overwhelming evidence that much of Earth’s reefs are in decline, our need for large-scale, repeatable assessments of reefs has never been so great. Fortunately, the last two decades have seen a rapid expansion in the ability for remote sensing to map and monitor the coral reef ecosystem, its overlying water column, and surrounding environment. Remote sensing is now a fundamental tool for the mapping, monitoring and management of coral reef ecosystems. Remote sensing offers repeatable, quantitative assessments of habitat and environmental characteristics over spatially extensive areas. As the multi-disciplinary field of coral reef remote sensing continues to mature, results demonstrate that the techniques and capabilities continue to improve. New developments allow reef assessments and mapping to be performed with higher accuracy, across greater spatial areas, and with greater temporal frequency. The increased level of information that remote sensing now makes available also allows more complex scientific questions to be addressed. As defined for this book, remote sensing includes the vast array of geospatial data collected from land, water, ship, airborne and satellite platforms. The book is organized by technology, including: visible and infrared sensing using photographic, multispectral and hyperspectral instruments; active sensing using light detection and ranging (LiDAR); acoustic sensing using ship, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and in-water platforms; and thermal and radar instruments. Emphasis and Audience This book serves multiple roles. It offers an overview of the current state-of-the-art technologies for reef mapping, provides detailed technical information for coral reef remote sensing specialists, imparts insight on the scientific questions that can be tackled using this technology, and also includes a foundation for those new to reef remote sensing. The individual sections of the book include introductory overviews of four main types of remotely sensed data used to study coral reefs, followed by specific examples demonstrating practical applications of the different technologies being discussed. Guidelines for selecting the most appropriate sensor for particular applications are provided, including an overview of how to utilize remote sensing data as an effective tool in science and management. The text is richly illustrated with examples of each sensing technology applied to a range of scientific, monitoring and management questions in reefs around the world. As such, the book is broadly accessible to a general audience, as well as students, managers, remote sensing specialists and anyone else working with coral reef ecosystems.

Sustainable management of natural resources is an urgent need, given the changing climatic conditions of Earth systems. The ability to monitor natural resources precisely and accurately is increasingly important. New and advanced remote sensing tools and techniques are continually being developed to monitor and manage natural resources in an effective way. Remote sensing technology uses electromagnetic sensors to record, measure and monitor even small variations in natural resources. The addition of new remote sensing datasets, processing techniques and software makes remote sensing an exact and cost-effective tool and technology for natural resource monitoring and management. Advances in Remote Sensing for Natural Resources Monitoring provides a detailed overview of the potential applications of advanced satellite data in natural resource monitoring. The book determines how environmental and - ecological knowledge and satellite-based information can be effectively combined to address a wide array of current natural resource management needs. Each chapter covers different aspects of remote sensing approach to monitor the natural resources effectively, to provide a platform for decision and policy. This important work: Provides comprehensive coverage of advances and applications of remote sensing in natural resources monitoring Includes new and emerging approaches for resource monitoring with case studies Covers different aspects of forest, water, soil- land resources, and agriculture Provides exemplary illustration of themes such as glaciers, surface runoff, ground water potential and soil moisture content with temporal analysis Covers blue carbon, seawater intrusion, playa wetlands, and wetland inundation with case studies Showcases disaster studies such as floods, tsunami, showing where remote sensing technologies have been used This edited book is the first volume of the book series Advances in Remote Sensing for Earth Observation.

Beginning with an overview of data and concepts developed in the EU-project HABIT-CHANGE, this book addresses the need for sharing knowledge and experience in the field of biodiversity conservation and climate change. There is an urgent need to build capacity in protected areas to monitor, assess, manage and report the effects of climate change and their interaction with other pressures. The contributors identify barriers to the adaptation of conservation management, such as the mismatch between planning reality and the decision context at site level. Short and vivid descriptions of case studies, drawn from investigation areas all over Central and Eastern Europe, illustrate both the local impacts of climate change and their consequences for future management. These focus on ecosystems most vulnerable to changes in climatic conditions, including alpine areas, wetlands, forests, lowland grasslands and coastal areas. The case studies demonstrate the application of adaptation strategies in protected areas like National Parks, Biosphere Reserves and Natural Parks, and reflect the potential benefits as well as existing obstacles. A general section provides the necessary background information on climate trends and their effects on abiotic and biotic components. Often, the parties to policy change and conservation management, including managers, land users and stakeholders, lack both expertise and incentives to undertake adaptation activities. The authors recognise that achieving the needed changes in behavior – habit – is as much a social learning process as a matter of science-based procedure. They describe the implementation of modeling, impact assessment and monitoring of climate conditions, and show how the results can support efforts to increase stakeholder involvement in local adaptation strategies. The book concludes by pointing out the need for more work to communicate the cross-sectoral nature of biodiversity protection, the value of well-informed planning in the long-term process of adaptation, the definition of acceptable change, and the motivational value of exchanging experience and examples of good practice.