Since the vision of a Digital Earth was first formally proposed by US then-Vice President Al Gore in January 1998, much impressive progress has been made in basic theories, implementing techniques and building applications of Digital Earth. Nowadays, Digital Earth systems, such as Google Earth, NASA WorldWind and Cesium, have been widely embraced by Earth scientists of various disciplines as convenient tools to enhance science for various application scenarios, including integrating geospatial information, improving visualization capabilities, exploring spatio-temporal changes, and communicating scientific results. As organizing metaphor of the Earth’s surface, Digital Earth systems not only offer users the capability to explore high-resolution images and terrain data on different spatial scales, but also can be used to integrate, visualize and analyze user-generated remote sensing imageries, terrain data, 3D models and other custom geospatial information in a variety of formats.
 
With continuous evolution of geospatial information acquisition technology, Earth scientists began to conveniently capture, store and process vast quantities of geospatial datasets to reveal the multi-dimensional structure and composition of the entire Earth space including the Earth’s subsurface and atmosphere, as well as the Earth’s surface. However, challenges remain in the areas of geospatial data processing, integration, time-dynamic analysis, 3D modeling and visualization, and their respective applications in Digital Earth.
 
Today, it is possible to look back in history and summarize the status of the Digital Earth vision, as well as imagine its future. The “Digital Earth: From Surface to Deep” special issue aims to provide a collection of current, state-of-the-art research in Digital Earth and its use for geoscience applications. Original contributions that deal with Digital Earth from the basic theory and implementing technique to applications with Digital Earth systems as their platforms are considered relevant to this special issue. Authors are invited to submit papers on a range of topics, but not limited to:

• Theory for the Digital Earth vision. 
• Construction methods and implementing techniques for Digital Earth systems.
• Impacts of typical Digital Earth systems.
• Multi-dimensional modeling, visualization and quality assurance for Digital Earth systems.
• Digital Earth as the platform for urban, environmental, atmospheric, aerospace, geographical, geological, and educational applications.

  
The contributions should be original and have not been published or submitted elsewhere. Papers published or submitted for conference publications may be considered subject to significant extension to their original version. Substantive research and relevant-for-practice papers will be preferred. Review articles around the topics are also encouraged.
  
Guest Editors:
Prof. Liangfeng Zhu
School of Geographic Sciences
East China Normal University, China
lfzhu@geo.ecnu.edu.cn
 
Prof. Faramarz F. Samavati
Department of Computer Science
University of Calgary, Canada
samavati@cpsc.ucalgary.ca
 
Dr. Weisheng Hou
School of Earth Sciences and Engineering
Sun Yat-sen University, China
houwsh@mail.sysu.edu.cn
 
Dr. Xiaoping Du
Key Lab of Digital Earth Sciences, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth
Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
duxp@radi.ac.cn
 
Time Line for the Special Issue
1. Announcement circulation: March 20th, 2020
2. Paper submission open: March 20th to October 20th, 2020
3. Papers due: October 20th, 2020
4. Reviews back to authors: November 30th, 2020
5. Paper revisions due: December 31st, 2020
6. Notification of final acceptance: January 31st, 2021
7. Publication in Issue 2, 2021
 
Online Submission
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/fesci