Dear Colleagues,
Tropical forests play an important role in biodiversity conservation, terrestrial carbon cycle, and hydrological regimes among others. Attempts to preserve the role of tropical forests in providing ecosystem services requires information on the spatial and temporal distribution of ecosystem services at various scales (i.e., patch, landscape, watershed, administrative) to support environmental management and policy processes. This is important as the share of forests designated primarily for soil and water protection is increasing while, at the same time, forest biodiversity and carbon stocks are lost due to deforestation and forest degradation and the accompanying increase in fragmented habitats. Ecosystem service assessments are often limited by spatial and spatiotemporal data, a challenge that may be overcome by the use of Earth observation system (EOS), given its many beneficial features. Despite its widespread recognition, only a few ecosystem service studies use EOS in practice. This Special Issue invites studies that highlight the link between EOS (i.e., satellite, aircraft, drone; optical, SAR, hyperspectral) and ecosystem service assessments (i.e., field inventories, stakeholder elucidations, continuous monitoring) with a particular focus on tropical forest environments. These studies should illuminate new ways in which EOS can be used to assess, monitor, or model ecosystem services at patch, landscape, or larger spatial scales. Possible further topics include mapping of ecosystem processes and services under landscape change dynamics, effects of scale on monitoring ecosystem services in conjunction with EOS, and approaches of integrated socioecological assessments with a particular focus on EOS and ecosystem functions and services.
Dr. Melvin Lippe
Dr. Sven Günter
Guest Editors
Deadline for submission: 31 March 2022