A Review of the Application of Remote Sensing Data for Abandoned Agricultural Land Identification with Focus on Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

This study aims to analyze and assess studies published from 1992 to 2019 and listed in the Web of Science (WOS) and Current Contents (CC) databases, and to identify agricultural abandonment by application of remote sensing (RS) optical and microwave data. We selected 73 studies by applying structured queries in a field tag form and Boolean operators in the WOS portal and by expert analysis. An expert assessment yielded the topical picture concerning the definitions and criteria for the identification of abandoned agricultural land (AAL). The analysis also showed the absence of similar field research, which serves not only for validation, but also for understanding the process of agricultural abandonment. The benefit of the fusion of optical and radar data, which supports the application of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data, is also evident. Knowledge attained from the literary sources indicated that there exists, in the world literature, a well-covered problem of abandonment identification or biomass estimation, as well as missing works dealing with the assessment of the natural accretion of biomass in AAL.