Editorial: Remote and Proximal Sensing of Grasslands
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DGPF
EDITORIAL
Editorial: Remote and Proximal Sensing of Grasslands Peter Krzystek1,2 · Georg Bareth1,3 Published online: 20 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Even a short glance at the Web of Science clearly shows that research interest in grassland and remote sensing for monitoring purposes has increased significantly since 2010. Furthermore, research activities in using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for grassland monitoring have risen almost exponentially since 2015, with first studies using remotely controlled fixed wing or helicopter UAVs dating back to the 1990s. The answers to why grasslands have become of more interest are manifold. One reason is their diversity, ranging from natural grassland, over extensively used pastures and meadows to very intensively managed systems. Ecosystems connected with prairies, pampas, steppes, savannahs, rangelands, alpine pastures, silvo-pastoral systems, and many more characterize grasslands diversity and their global presence. Estimates show that 30–40% of the terrestrial land masses are covered by these grassland ecosystems. Another reason is their importance in the context of global and climate change. Soils are the largest carbon stock and the significance of grasslands in the global carbon cycle and their role as a carbon sink are well known. Furthermore, managed grasslands are an important food supplier and play an essential role in the agribusiness when it comes to producing meat, milk, cheese, wool, etc. Considering this background, the DGPF Working Group “Remote Sensing Applications for Forestry and Agriculture” decided to initiate special sessions on remote and proximal
* Georg Bareth g.bareth@uni‑koeln.de Peter Krzystek [email protected] 1
DGPF Working Group “Remote Sensing Applications for Forestry and Agriculture”, Cologne, Germany
2
Department of Geoinformatics, University of Applied Sciences Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany
3
University of Cologne, Institute of Geography, GIS & RS Group, 50923 Cologne, Germany
sensing of grasslands at the annual DGPF conference in Stuttgart in March 2020 (Stilla 2020). At the same time, the Working Group announced in 2019 a call for this special issue on the same topic. The four papers of our special issue, the presentations at the DGPF 2020 conference (2020), and the two papers of the conference proceedings clearly show the broad topics when it comes to remote sensing of grasslands. The applied sensors of the studies range from satellite to UAV sensors and include proximal sensing for grassland research. In the conference proceedings, Schaumberger and Adelwöhrer (2020) present an impressive data management system, the SpectroAnalyst, for handling spectral experiment plot data acquired with field spectroradiometers. Wachendorf et al. (2020) applied the Cubert Firefly, a hyperspectral UAV-mounted imaging sensor, to estimate forage quality and invasive species in species-rich grasslands. The authors found high R2 in forage quality estimation and established an analysis workflow to map invasive species. In th
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