Remote sensing of land change: A multifaceted perspective

• Published in: Remote sensing of environment Vol. 282; p. 113266
• Main Authors: Zhu, Zhe, Qiu, Shi, Ye, Su
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.12.2022
• Subjects: Change agent; Change metric; Change target; Climate change; Climate variability; data collection; environment; Land change; land cover; Land cover change; Land disturbance; remote sensing; social sciences; Succession; Time series; Change target; Land change; Climate change; Succession; Climate variability; Change agent; Land cover change; Time series; Change metric; Land disturbance
• ISSN: 0034-4257; 1879-0704
• DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2022.113266

The discipline of land change science has been evolving rapidly in the past decades. Remote sensing played a major role in one of the essential components of land change science, which includes observation, monitoring, and characterization of land change. In this paper, we proposed a new framework of the multifaceted view of land change through the lens of remote sensing and recommended five facets of land change including change location, time, target, metric, and agent. We also evaluated the impacts of spatial, spectral, temporal, angular, and data-integration domains of the remotely sensed data on observing, monitoring, and characterization of different facets of land change, as well as discussed some of the current land change products. We recommend clarifying the specific land change facet being studied in remote sensing of land change, reporting multiple or all facets of land change in remote sensing products, shifting the focus from land cover change to specific change metric and agent, integrating social science data and multi-sensor datasets for a deeper and fuller understanding of land change, and recognizing limitations and weaknesses of remote sensing in land change studies. •A multifaceted view of land change through the lens of remote sensing was proposed.•Change location, time, target, metric, and agent were the five proposed facets.•Discussed the spatial, spectral, temporal, angular, and data-integration issues.•Some of the current land change products were reviewed and compared.•Future characteristics of land change products were recommended.