Revealing Ecosystem Services Through Geospatial Technologies: Beyond the Surface

This book covers the quantification of forests, grasslands, and woodlands ecosystem services from the supply side (e.g., regulatory and provisioning services) to the demand side, including human cultural needs. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA, 2005) defines ecosystem services as simply the benefits that are derived from ecosystems for human well-being (Board 2005). The report has documented that ecosystems have contributed more than 50% of the world's GDP. However, as a result of climate change and anthropogenic impacts, about 60% of the world's ecosystem services have been degraded. This significant reduction of services has serious consequences on food production, climate regulation, and net primary production, among other services which directly affect human well-being. In order to appreciate the benefits of various ecosystems to humanity and monitor their degradation, a systematic quantification of ecosystem services and their change in both time and space is critical. In particular, there is a need to characterize the ecological infrastructures, processes, and ecosystem functions that underpin the ecosystem services in ways that can be evaluated and tracked (Potschin and Haines-Young 2016). In addition, various intervention measures to restore degraded ecosystems require constant and accurate measurement of the ecosystem characteristics in order to assess the benefits of ecological restoration.

Vegetation in particular provides a number of provisioning (forage production, food), regulatory (climate, temperature), supporting (primary production, nutrient cycling), and cultural (educational, recreation) ecosystem services as well as biodiversity maintenance (Masenyama et al. 2022). Remote sensing data contributes significantly to mapping, modeling, and quantitative valuation of the ecosystem services in a spatially explicit manner. It provides an opportunity to use standard protocols at various spatial scales as well as wall-to-wall mapping of phenomena through time, which is critical for monitoring on a continuous basis.

Prof. Onisimo Mutanga is a full Professor and South African Research Chair  (SARChI) on Land use Planning and management. He is an NRF B-rated Scientist with more than 300 scientific publications, 9527 Scopus citations and a H-index of 44. His expertise lies on vegetation (including agricultural crops) state analysis in the face of global change using Remote Sensing. He integrates Ecology, biodiversity conservation and Remote sensing to model the impact of forest fragmentation, pests and diseases and invasive species on agricultural and natural ecosystems.

Dr. Prem Chandra Pandey received his PhD University of Leicester, United Kingdom, under the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan (CSFP). He has more than 8 years of teaching and 12 years of research experience. He received his BSc (Hons.) & M.Sc. degree in Environmental Sciences from Institute of Sciences, Banaras Hindu University. He obtained M.Tech degree in Remote Sensing (2009) from Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) Mesra Ranchi, India. Dr Pandey is currently working as Assistant Professor in Department of Life Sciences & Center for Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence (deemed to be University), Greater Noida, India. He did his Post-Doctoral from Tel Aviv University Israel. Dr Pandey has been associated with Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi during his early career. Dr. Pandey has been a recipient of several awards including Commonwealth Fellow United Kingdom, INSPIRE fellow GoI, MHRD-UGC fellow GoI, Malviya Gold Medal from Banaras Hindu University, SERB-NPDF from the Government of India, and Young Investigator Award. Dr Pandey is working on three pro-jects related to Monitoring of wetlands/chilika lakes, mainly focusing on ramsar sites along with other natural resources-based research work funded by the NGP and SERB Government of India. Dr Pandey is also working with science collaborators in disaster monitoring in the Himalayan regions. He has published more than 91+ peer reviewed journal papers , 8 edited books, several book chapters, and presented his work at national and international conferences. He is a serving member (associate editor) of the editorial board for Geocarto International Journal, Taylor & Francis, Scientific Reports Nature Portfolio, Sustainable Development  Wiley, and acted as guest editor for Remote Sensing, MDPI. Additionally, he is also a member of ISG (Indian Society of Geomatics), ISPA (International Society of Precision Agriculture), ISRS (Indian Society of Remote Sensing), IUCN-CEM (2017–2025), Society of Wetland Scientists (2021–2022), SPIE, and AAG. Dr Pandey focuses his research on remote sensing for natural resources including forestry, agriculture, urban studies, environmental pollutant modeling. and climate change.

Dr. Sandipan Das is an Assistant Professor at Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics, Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune, India. Dr. Das pursued his Master’s degree in Geoinformatics from Pune University and PhD in Geoinformatics from Symbiosis International (Deemed University). During his Ph.D., he qualified for Geography NET conducted by UGC (June 2013). He has more than 7.6 years of teaching and 10 years of research experience. His areas of research interest include forest biomass and carbon assessment, water resources management, groundwater mapping, drought monitoring, and Geospatial Modeling of Environments. He has worked as a Principal Investigator, Co-Principal Investigator and team member on several research projects funded by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Department of Science and Technology (DST), and Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF). He has published 20 research papers, 1 book, 7 book chapters, and 4 conference proceedings. He has organized 4 capacity building geospatial training programs sponsored by DST & ISRO. He is a reviewer for the several scientific journals of the International reputes.

Dr. Uday Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography, Bhatter College, Dantan, Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal, India and Applied Geographer with a Doctoral Degree in Applied Geography at Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, Odisha, India. His areas of research interest cover Urban Planning, Social and Human geography, Applied Geomorphology, Hazards & Disasters, Environmental Issues. Currently, Dr. Uday Chatterjee has completed the Special Issue (S.I) of Urbanism, Smart Cities and Modelling, Geojournal, Springer as a Lead Editor, Book Series Editor  Development in Environmental Science, Elsevier.