A Decade of Remote Sensing for Vegetation Monitoring with Sentinel-2

Abstract

Since its launch in 2015, the Sentinel-2 mission has become a cornerstone of moderate-resolution vegetation monitoring, enabling spatially explicit and temporally dense observations of terrestrial ecosystems. Its combination of 10–20 m spatial resolution, a revisit interval of less than five days, and a spectral configuration including red-edge and Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) bands has transformed optical vegetation monitoring beyond coarse-resolution greenness products. This review synthesises the use of Sentinel-2 for vegetation monitoring, with emphasis on phenology and growth dynamics, biomass and carbon estimation, vegetation stress detection, and associated methodological developments. A systematic Scopus search identified 1700 publications, of which 1097 studies were retained following thematic and methodological screening. The results reveal rapid growth in Sentinel-2-based research after 2018, reflecting its transition into a widely adopted data source supported by cloud-based processing platforms and harmonised data products. Research output is concentrated in a limited number of journals and regions, with Europe and Asia dominating contributions, while other regions remain underrepresented. Phenology and growth monitoring, biomass and carbon assessment, and vegetation stress analysis emerged as the principal application domains. Across these themes, methodological development has shifted from vegetation indices towards machine learning, hybrid radiative-transfer modelling, and multi-sensor data fusion. The reviewed evidence indicates that no single methodological approach consistently outperforms others; rather, performance depends on the target variable, ecosystem characteristics, and the treatment of observational uncertainty. Sentinel-2 has transformed vegetation monitoring by enabling spatially explicit assessment of vegetation phenology, biomass, carbon dynamics, and stress across ecosystems. However, important challenges remain, including uncertainty propagation, limited sensitivity to early physiological stress, the absence of thermal observations, and uneven validation across ecosystem types. Future progress will depend on uncertainty-aware retrieval frameworks, physically informed hybrid models, multi-sensor integration, and expanded calibration and validation across underrepresented ecosystems.