Recent Advances and Future Perspectives in Forest Hydrology
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Hydrology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 37
Special Issue Editors
Interests: climate change; hydrological modelling; evapotranspiration; land-use change; forest hydrology
Interests: forest hydrology; hydrological processes; erosion; sediment transport; fluvial morphology
Interests: forest hydrology; watershed management; landscape ecology; environmental modelling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Forests fundamentally regulate precipitation partitioning, evapotranspiration, runoff, groundwater recharge, and water quality, yet global and local syntheses consistently reveal critical research gaps and unsolved topics. Key uncertainties concern deep percolation and surface–groundwater coupling, hydrological feedbacks in understudied biomes (tropical, boreal, warm, and cold semi-arid), the role of climate extremes, and the conversion of process knowledge into basin- to continental-scale models and water-governance frameworks. Addressing these gaps is essential for forecasting water availability and quality, mitigating flood and drought risks, and designing nature-positive forestry interventions under rapid land-use and climate change.
This Special Issue therefore invites full research articles and comprehensive reviews that perform the following:
- Quantify forest impacts on surface and groundwater exchanges, sediment and solute fluxes, and ecohydrological feedbacks across spatial and temporal scales.
- Examine the hydrological impacts of management and disturbance—harvesting, thinning, afforestation, wildfires, pests, storms—across diverse climatic zones and spatial and temporal scales.
- Advance multi-scale modelling, remote sensing, data assimilation, and AI techniques to integrate plot observations with basin-catchment and regional-scale assessments.
- Synthesize long-term catchment or LTER datasets to detect trends, break points, and impacts.
- Evaluate socio-hydrological trade-offs, governance instruments, and ecosystem-service outcomes that link forest water functions to human well-being.
By tackling these frontiers, this Issue will provide a comprehensive evidence base needed to inform sustainable forest and water-resource policy worldwide.
Dr. Francisco Balocchi
Dr. Andrés A. Iroumé
Dr. Silvio Ferraz
Guest Editors
Dr. Teresa Reyna
Guest Editor Assistant
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.
Keywords
- forest hydrology
- groundwater–surface-water interactions
- paired-catchment
- remote sensing
- climate extremes
- forest disturbances
- socio-hydrology
- nature-based solutions
- machine learning
- global change
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