Sensors in agriculture and forestry

Agriculture and Forestry are two broad and promising areas demanding technological solutions with the aim of increasing production or accurate inventories for sustainability while the environmental impact is minimized by reducing the application of chemical products or mechanical practices. In addition to this, the immediate consequence is the reduction of production costs. Sensors-based technologies provide appropriate tools to achieve the above goals. The explosive technological advances and development in recent years enormously facilitates the attainment of these objectives removing many barriers for their implementation, including the reservations expressed by the farmers themselves. Precision Agriculture is an emerging area where sensor-based technologies play an important role. Farmers, researchers and technical manufacturers, all together are joining their efforts to find efficient solutions and improvements in production and costs. Contributes significantly to this effort dissemination of results through scientific publications and international events, where Sensors is a clear example. This is the second special issue published in Sensors for the same topic (Agriculture and Forestry) with important contributions; some of them coming from the First International Conference on Robotics and associated High-technologies and Equipment (www.rhea-conference.eu/2012), what evidence sensitivity and coverage Sensors offers for technological advancement in these areas. There are still many challenges and problems to be solved or improved. Therefore new special issues are foreseen to be launched in the future, including the one in conjunction with the above conference on its second edition (http://www.rhea-conference.eu/2014/)