Special Issue "Forest Ecosystem Resilience and Resistance under Climate Change"

Dear Colleagues,

Since 1950, the Earth's climate has been undergoing an accelerated change characterized by global warming. In the context of climate change, forest ecosystems' structure, biodiversity, growth characteristics and stability are facing severe challenges, as well as the restoration and reconstruction of degraded forest ecosystems.

In addition to the temperature rising, climate change has also increased the frequency and severity of extreme events such as hurricanes, fires, droughts, and floods. Globally, these natural disturbances are likely to counteract the effects of warming and higher CO₂ concentrations on forest growth. Severe drought can stress trees into hydraulic failure and carbon starvation, reducing forest productivity and causing tree death. Strong wind events will cause damage to trees and disturb forest structures to varying degrees, and in the case of climate warming, the accelerated growth rate of trees may be manifested as a weakened resistance to wind damage. In addition, droughts and hurricanes may indirectly lead to the outbreak of insects and pathogens, and increase the risk of fire. For temperate and northern regions, climate change will increase the frequency of fires by prolonging the fire season and creating drier burning conditions, which will further increase the loss of forest area. For tropical regions, fires will also cause a large loss of soil carbon and nitrogen.

Due to the uncertainty of climate change, the complexity of ecosystems and the limitations of human cognition, it is urgent for people to know how forest ecosystems resist and adapt to these external and unregular changes.

This Special Issue welcomes all kinds of research on forest ecosystems under the influence of climate change, including but not limited to the following aspects:

• How a forest responds to environmental change;
• Extreme weather's effects on forest ecosystems;
• Trees’ adaptation to global warming;
• Endurance maximum of forests to disturbance;
• Spatial or temporal dynamics of forest structure;
• Biodiversity and habitats variation in forest ecosystems;
• Vulnerability, sensitivity and resilience of forest ecosystems to climate change, etc.

Dr. Elena Cantarello
Prof. Dr. Ross Hill
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• forest ecosystem
• forest resilience
• forest resistance
• forest biodiversity
• external disturbance
• climate change
• vegetation dynamics