Remote sensing of socio-ecological dynamics in urban neighborhoods

Remote sensing has often been applied to study cities and the spatial arrangements of their people, buildings, roads, and trees. Rarely do these studies examine the socio-ecological processes that give rise to the spatio-temporal patterns of a neighborhood’s biotic and abiotic components. Yet the primacy of land in facilitating and mediating reciprocal human-environment interactions makes remote sensing of land changes a powerful approach for investigating socio-ecological change. This article reviews recent developments in remote sensing studies of urban populations, vegetation, and housing and discusses how remote sensing observations of these patterns can connect to underlying socio-ecological processes.