Dear Colleagues,

Forests cover around one-third of the global land surface, store about half of the terrestrial carbon and are the dominating contributors of terrestrial net primary production. Natural disturbances, such as fires, insect outbreaks, and windthrows are an integral part of ecosystem dynamics in forests around the globe. Usually, they occur as relatively rare events and form characteristic regimes of typical disturbance frequency, sizes, and severity over extended spatial and temporal scales. However, forest disturbance regimes are increasing in frequency and in magnitude due to climate change. Remote sensing (RS) data have a long history in forest disturbances mapping through several different sensors and approaches, including bi-temporal analyses of image pairs, time series segmentation, and near-real-time monitoring. In this context, we organized the “Remote Sensing of Forest Disturbances” Special Issue. This Special Issue covers potential topics including but not limited to: 

Response of forest dynamics to anthropogenic activities and climate change;

Time-series change detection and trend analysis of forest ecosystems;

The impacts of climate extremes (e.g., drought, wetness) on the forest ecosystem;

Monitoring of forest biomass and carbon dynamics related to forest disturbance;

Mapping of forest structure parameters.

Monitoring of Forest disturbance magnitude and recovery

Forest disturbance characterization

Remote sensing and reference data integration to obtain forest disturbance statistics

Dr. Saverio Francini

Guest Editor