Remote sensing, the science of obtaining information via noncontact recording, has swept the fields of ecology, biodiversity and conservation (EBC). Several quality review papers have contributed to this field. However, these papers often discuss the issues from the standpoint of an ecologist or a biodiversity specialist. This review focuses on the spaceborne remote sensing of EBC from the perspective of remote sensing specialists, i.e., it is organized in the context of state-of-the-art remote sensing technology, including instruments and techniques. Herein, the instruments to be discussed consist of high spatial resolution, hyperspectral, thermal infrared, small-satellite constellation, and LIDAR sensors; and the techniques refer to image classification, vegetation index (VI), inversion algorithm, data fusion, and the integration of remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS).

The frequency and severity of forest fires, coupled with changes in spatial and temporal precipitation and temperature patterns, are likely to severely affect the characteristics of forest and permafrost patterns in boreal eco-regions. Forest fires, however, are also an ecological factor in how forest ecosystems form and function, as they affect the rate and characteristics of tree recruitment. A better understanding of fire regimes and forest recovery patterns in different environmental and climatic conditions will improve the management of sustainable forests by facilitating the process of forest resilience. Remote sensing has been identified as an effective tool for preventing and monitoring forest fires, as well as being a potential tool for understanding how forest ecosystems respond to them. However, a number of challenges remain before remote sensing practitioners will be able to better understand the effects of forest fires and how vegetation responds afterward. This article attempts to provide a comprehensive review of current research with respect to remotely sensed data and methods used to model post-fire effects and forest recovery patterns in boreal forest regions. The review reveals that remote sensing-based monitoring of post-fire effects and forest recovery patterns in boreal forest regions is not only limited by the gaps in both field data and remotely sensed data, but also the complexity of far-northern fire regimes, climatic conditions and environmental conditions. We expect that the integration of different remotely sensed data coupled with field campaigns can provide an important data source to support the monitoring of post-fire effects and forest recovery patterns. Additionally, the variation and stratification of pre- and post-fire vegetation and environmental conditions should be considered to achieve a reasonable, operational model for monitoring post-fire effects and forest patterns in boreal regions.

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are severe ecological disasters threatening aquatic systems throughout the World, which necessitate scientific efforts in detecting and monitoring them. Compared with traditional in situ point observations, satellite remote sensing is considered as a promising technique for studying HABs due to its advantages of large-scale, real-time, and long-term monitoring. The present review summarizes the suitability of current satellite data sources and different algorithms for detecting HABs. It also discusses the spatial scale issue of HABs. Based on the major problems identified from previous literature, including the unsystematic understanding of HABs, the insufficient incorporation of satellite remote sensing, and a lack of multiple oceanographic explanations of the mechanisms causing HABs, this review also attempts to provide a comprehensive understanding of the complicated mechanism of HABs impacted by multiple oceanographic factors. A potential synthesized framework can be established by combining multiple accessible satellite remote sensing approaches including visual interpretation, spectra analysis, parameters retrieval and spatial-temporal pattern analysis. This framework aims to lead to a systematic and comprehensive monitoring of HABs based on satellite remote sensing from multiple oceanographic perspectives.

Maintaining a healthy ecosystem is essential for maximizing sustainable ecological services of the best quality to human beings. Ecological and conservation research has provided a strong scientific background on identifying ecological health indicators and correspondingly making effective conservation plans. At the same time, ecologists have asserted a strong need for spatially explicit and temporally effective ecosystem health assessments based on remote sensing data. Currently, remote sensing of ecosystem health is only based on one ecosystem attribute: vigor, organization, or resilience. However, an effective ecosystem health assessment should be a comprehensive and dynamic measurement of the three attributes. This paper reviews opportunities of remote sensing, including optical, radar, and LiDAR, for directly estimating indicators of the three ecosystem attributes, discusses the main challenges to develop a remote sensing-based spatially-explicit comprehensive ecosystem health system, and provides some future perspectives. The main challenges to develop a remote sensing-based spatially-explicit comprehensive ecosystem health system are: (1) scale issue; (2) transportability issue; (3) data availability; and (4) uncertainties in health indicators estimated from remote sensing data. However, the Radarsat-2 constellation, upcoming new optical sensors on Worldview-3 and Sentinel-2 satellites, and improved technologies for the acquisition and processing of hyperspectral, multi-angle optical, radar, and LiDAR data and multi-sensoral data fusion may partly address the current challenges.

Quantifying non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV) is important for ecosystem management and studies on climate change, ecology, and hydrology because it controls uptake of carbon, water, and nutrients together with frequency and intensity of natural fire, and serves as wildlife habitat. The ecological importance of NPV has driven considerable research on quantitatively estimating NPV in diverse ecosystems including croplands, forests, grasslands, savannah, and shrublands using remote sensing data. However, a comprehensive review is not available. This review highlights the theoretical bases and the critical elements of remote sensing for NPV estimation, and summarizes research on estimating fractional cover of NPV (NPV cover) and biomass using passive optical hyperspectral and multispectral remote sensing data, active synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and light detection and ranging (LiDAR), and integrated multi-sensorial data. We also discuss advantages and disadvantages of optical, LiDAR, and SAR data and pinpoint future direction on NPV estimation using remote sensing data. Currently, most NPV research has been mainly focused on NPV cover, not NPV biomass, using passive optical data, while a few studies have used LiDAR data to quantify NPV biomass in forests and SAR data on NPV estimation in croplands and grasslands. In the future, more efforts should be made to estimate NPV biomass and to investigate the best use of hyperspectral, LiDAR, SAR data, and their integration. The upcoming new optical sensor on Sentinel-2 satellites, Radarsat-2 constellation and NovaSAR, technological innovation in hyperspectral, LiDAR, and SAR, and improvements on methodology for information extraction and combining multi-sensorial data will provide more opportunities for NPV estimation.

Drought is a significant climatic disturbance in grasslands, yet the impact drought caused by global warming has on grassland phenology is still unclear. Our research investigates the long-term variability of grassland phenology in relation to drought in the Canadian prairies from 1982 to 2014. Based on the start of growing season (SOG) and the end of growing season (EOG) derived from Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) NDVI3g datasets, we found that grasslands demonstrated complex phenology trends over our study period. We retrieved the drought conditions of the prairie ecozone at multiple time scales from the 1- to 12-month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). We evaluated the correlations between the detrended time series of phenological metrics and SPEIs through Pearson correlation analysis and identified the dominant drought where the maximum correlations were found for each ecozone and each phenological metric. The dominant drought over preceding months account for 14–33% and 26–44% of the year-to-year variability of SOG and EOG, respectively, and fewer water deficits would favor an earlier SOG and delayed EOG. The drought-induced shifts in SOG and EOG were determined based on the correlation between the dominant drought and the year-to-year variability using ordinary least square (OLS) method. Our research also quantifies the correlation between precipitation and the evolution of the dominant droughts and the drought-induced shifts in grassland phenology. Every millimeter (mm) increase in precipitation accumulated over the dominant periods would cause SOG to occur 0.06–0.21 days earlier, and EOG to occur 0.23–0.45 days later. Our research reveals a complex phenology response in relation to drought in the Canadian prairie grasslands and demonstrates that drought is a significant factor in the timing of both SOG and EOG. Thus, it is necessary to include drought-related climatic variables when predicting grassland phenology response to climate change and variability.