SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Informatics and Remote Sensing
Technological innovation for environmental monitoring of strategic ecosystems: implications for sustainability
Provisionally accepted
- 1Konrad Lorenz University Foundation, Bogotá, Colombia
- 2Escuela Nacional de Carabineros "Alfonso López Pumarejo, Facatativa, Colombia
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One of the critical challenges in environmental, social, and economic terms is the progressive loss of strategic ecosystems, such as wetlands, moorlands, and mangroves. These natural systems provide water regulation, biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and the well-being and survival of living beings that directly and indirectly depend on them. The loss of strategic ecosystems like wetlands, moorlands, as well as mangroves, are representing the critical challenges that affect directly both environmental and social sustainability. Taking this into account, the technological innovation, where the AI, remote sensing and IoT, are emerging as key tools for strengthening the monitoring and sustainable management processes. Thus, the objective of this study is to analyze scientific developments which have had a great relevance in terms of technological innovation and their applicability on the environmental monitoring of strategic ecosystems and the consequences of it on the sustainability. For this end, 500 documents were analyzed for developing a bibliometric analysis indexed in Scopus (1993 – 2026), for processing the data were used VOS viewer and Bibliometrix. For instance, the results showed that there is an increased exponential growth of the academic production since 2016, which peaked in 2025; most of these studies were held by China, Germany and the United States, and the most studied technologies where the IoT Networks, AI, and satellite remote sensing. Although, Africa and Latin America had a lower participation in comparison, which is a clear proof of the gigantic gap in terms of accessing and implementing these technologies. This study provides evidence about regional gaps, research trends and key actors, while highlighting the constant need of strengthen the technological interoperability, the inclusion of local communities and the design of evidence-based public policies. These findings provide a solid basis for guiding future research and sustainability strategies in strategic ecosystems.
Keywords: artificial intelligence, Environmental Monitoring, forest fires, police training, technological innovation
Received: 29 Oct 2025; Accepted: 27 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Gaitan-Angulo, Carvajal and Rangel. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mercedes Gaitan-Angulo
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