Stable Isotope Applications in Forest Ecosystems

Since the turn of this century, the applications of stable isotopes to forest ecology and management have experienced an exponential increase. This is because many biogeochemical processes that occur in forest ecosystems generate a distinctive isotopic imprint that can be used to track how major elements (C, N, O) are transferred between different compartments (trees and plants in general, soil and atmosphere), thereby allowing to investigate the effects of environmental variation in vegetation responses, climate–vegetation feedbacks, and carbon, nutrient and water cycles. In this Special Issue, we invite studies developing applications of stable isotopes in forest ecology, adaptive forest management, tree physiology, and ecohydrology.

In particular, we encourage studies enquiring into:

• Water vapor fluxes and carbon storage of forests, and their potential feedbacks on climate;
• Present and future shifts in tree responses to climate change toward water saving, and their effects on the magnitude and nature of climate–vegetation feedbacks;
• The upscaling of annual and intra-annual tree-ring isotopic signals to entire ecosystems benchmarking vegetation models of varying complexity;
• Temporal changes in the proportion of wood components in tree rings in relation to climate fluctuations and isotope-based retrievable climate signals;
• Stand dynamics under competition or disturbances (pests, forest fires), and assessment of forest management strategies to cope with them;
• Tree physiological responses using stable isotopes in combination with emerging tree-ring proxies (intra-annual density fluctuations, maximum and minimum density, vessel diameter, cell wall thickness, blue intensity);
• Long-term physiological responses of forest trees to elevated CO₂ and climate change across the globe, particularly in less explored areas (e.g., tropical and polar regions, Central Asia, Oceania).

Prof. Dr. Jordi Voltas
Dr. Juan Pedro Ferrio
Dr. Tatiana A. Shestakova
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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