Protected Areas, Climate Change, and Ecosystem Sustainability

Ecosystems around the world are changing at unprecedented rates. Through the use of remote sensing especially time series remote sensing, we can understand the impact of climate change, increased climate variability human pressures impacts on ecosystems at the landscape scale. This article focuses on remote sensing case studies of protected areas (PAs) encompassing diverse ecosystems around the world using a wide variety of methods at varying spatiotemporal scales. While the case studies are diverse they illustrate a key point that PAs need constant monitoring to understand the underlying ecological dynamics impact of human pressure on changing vegetation patterns. In order to establish such a long-term continuous monitoring of diverse regions around the world, time series analyses of remote sensing datasets time series approaches are required. Under climate change, the sustainability of diverse protected area ecosystems is in question. With techniques as described in this article, remote sensing technologies can be used to monitor and understand landscape-level processes and landscape change to identify potential vulnerabilities and tipping points.