Spaceborne remote sensing of the world’s protected areas

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Abstract
There has been a rapid evolution of satellites, sensors, and techniques to measure, monitor, and manage terrestrial protected areas. There are over 100,000 protected areas around the world and most lack important information on the status and trends of natural resource issues. We review advances and limitations in spaceborne remote sensing that can be applied to all terrestrial protected areas around the world. There have been significant advances in baseline vegetation mapping and land cover classifications by combining field data, data from multiple sensors, and classification techniques. However, global classifications on the extent of non-forest vegetation types (e.g. grasslands and shrublands) are still needed at 30 m pixel resolution. High spatial (< 1 m) and spectral (220 bands) resolution sensors have provided important data on environmental issues (e.g. invasive species, degradation) that are region or site specific. Advances in monitoring protected areas have primarily focused on forest ecosystems and land cover dynamics in and around protected areas using time series data. Landsat imagery can be used to monitor vegetation extent and dynamics at 30 m pixel resolution across the globe, while the MODIS sensors are more appropriate for monthly updates on trends of ecosystem health in protected areas. There has also been an increase in time series remote sensing datasets on anthropogenic impacts, such as light pollution, fire, and land surface temperature, that can be used for all protected areas. Future geographic research should focus on developing global protocols and incorporating near real time and annual metrics that can easily be used by natural resource managers to assess the status and trends of all protected areas.

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