Transitions at the Urban Edge Dynamics of the Urban-Rural Gradient

Scope

Urbanization has become one of the most transformative processes on Earth, yet much of the world’s population resides within the transition zones between urban and rural environments – theso-called rurban interface. These dynamic spaces embody rapid land-use change, social transformation, and environmental complexity, challenging our traditional binary definitions of “urban” and “rural.”

This special session aims to highlight remote sensing–based tools, datasets, and analytical methods that advance understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamics of the urban–rural gradient. We seek to explore how multi-scale, multi-sensor Earth Observation (EO) data – from (very) high-resolution (VHR) optical imagery to SAR and LiDAR – can capture the morphology, land-cover heterogeneity, and socio-ecological processes that characterize rurban transitions worldwide.

Topics include quantitative mapping and modeling of the urban–rural continuum, dense time-series analysis of peri-urban expansion (e.g., using Landsat or Sentinel-2 archives), ecosystem and socio economic change detection, and integration of EO with ancillary data such as nighttime lights, OpenStreetMap, census, or in-situ measurements. Monitoring of extractivism – including mining, quarrying, deforestation, and agricultural intensification – at the rurban fringe, and their ecological and socio-economic impacts, are also highly relevant themes. Recognizing that natural hazards such as floods, landslides, and wildfires often originate in or propagate through the rural–peri-urban domain, this session also welcomes contributions on hazard monitoring, vulnerability assessment, and impact analysis along this gradient.

Particular emphasis is placed on innovative computational approaches and open-source geospatial environments and cloud-native analysis pipelines for large-scale EO data processing. We encourage the integration of AI/ML-based classification and segmentation techniques as well as data fusion between UAV and satellite platforms.
By focusing on the “urban edge” as a dynamic spatial continuum, this session will showcase methodological advances, multi- sensor and -temporal case studies, and comparative frameworks that enhance our understanding of sustainability, resilience, and spatial planning in rapidly transforming landscapes.