Dear Colleagues,

Urban forests and greenspaces are important infrastructures to civilization. As much as conventionally regarded infrastructure such as pipes to move water and sewage, buildings to house people and utilities to move electricity - urban green spaces are a component that supports human health and ecosystem function. Thus, finding ways to effectively and efficiently measure this resource is important. Quantification of urban tree populations takes many forms from ground-based to aerial approaches. Finding ways to best understand and quantify trees is both important and necessary to best manage and plan for the desired levels of the canopy in communities. The focus of this Special Issue then takes a top-down approach to report on innovative ways to understand and quantify trees within urban locales.

This Special Issue aims to collect research about tree canopy and how it affects the management of urban forests. The scope is broad with any papers that use tree canopy as an approach to allow anyone from practitioners to researchers to decision-makers and others to make informed decisions on how and why urban forests evolve and change over time. Example ideas that fit this issue will include:

• Estimation of tree canopy through innovative ways,
• How do artificial intelligence and human-based intelligence systems compare,
• Historical explanation of tree canopy based on past events (e.g., insects, diseases, humans),
• Equitable distribution of tree canopy in urban environments,
• How does governance affect tree canopy,
• Estimation of tree canopy with ground-based sensors,
• Integration of tree canopy into urban forestry management,
• Policy and ordinance development and evaluation,

Specifically, this Special Issue is broadly considering papers for review since there are so many ways to estimate tree canopy and use this metric to best plan for urban forests and green spaces. This is consistent with the aims and scope of Land journal in dealing with land cover, land management as well as urban context and urban planning.

Suggested themes and article types for submissions may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• land cover mapping in urban area
• methods for measuring urban tree canopy
• urban tree canopy (UTC) and its assessment
• benefits and costs of the urban forest
• urban and community Trees
• artificial intelligence 

Dr. Andrew K Koeser
Prof. Dr. Richard Hauer
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• urban forest
• land cover
• urban tree canopy
• greenspace
• artificial intelligence
• machine learning
• aerial imagery
• governance
• ordinance