Remote Sensing Approaches for Monitoring Agricultural Expansion and Forest Conversion

Understanding where, when, and how agricultural expansion reshapes forested landscapes is central to addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and sustainable food production. Remote sensing technologies have advanced rapidly, yet translating complex Earth observation data into reliable information on land-use transitions remains a significant challenge, particularly around cross-scale validation and transferability of methods. New satellite missions, dense image time series, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing now offer unprecedented opportunities to detect and characterize agricultural expansion and forest conversion across diverse environments.This Research Topic aims to showcase innovative remote sensing methodologies and applications that deepen understanding of land-use change processes, with attention to approaches that improve mapping accuracy, integrate multiple data sources, quantify uncertainty, and support environmental monitoring frameworks, including but not limited to regulatory initiatives.Agricultural frontiers continue to expand across many regions, driven by rising demand for food, fibre, bioenergy, and other commodities. These dynamics carry significant consequences for forests, biodiversity, carbon stocks, water resources, and ecosystem resilience. Satellite observations now provide continuous, globally consistent records that enable detailed, long-term monitoring of land-use change at unprecedented scale.Growing regulatory requirements, such as the EU regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR), together with international climate and biodiversity commitments, underscore the need for reliable geospatial information that supports traceability, compliance, carbon accounting, and sustainable supply chains. These developments open new research opportunities at the interface of remote sensing, land-system science, and environmental governance, calling for closer collaboration between scientists, policymakers, and industry.This Research Topic welcomes contributions on remote sensing applications for agricultural expansion, forest conversion, and sustainable land-use monitoring.Areas of interest include:• Agricultural and Forest Dynamics: Crop mapping, forest type differentiation (primary, secondary, and agroforestry), degradation, and conversion tracking.• Methodologies and Technology: Time-series analysis, multi-sensor integration (optical, SAR, lidar, hyperspectral and UAVs), and AI or machine learning for classification and change detection.• Sustainability and Policy Applications: Supply chain traceability, carbon accounting, biodiversity monitoring, and regional to global applications supporting environmental policy.• Validation and Workflows: Near-real-time monitoring systems, uncertainty assessment, and benchmark datasets.Dr. Alana Neves is employed by Global Risk Assessment Services (GRAS). The remaining Topic Editors declare that the Research Topic was managed in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Topic editors: Alana Kasahara Neves, Thales Sehn Körting, Cesare Di Girolamo Neto, João M. N. Silva Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84146/remote-sensing-approaches-for-monitoring-agricultural-expansion-and-forest-conversion