Carbon Dynamics and Carbon Stocks in Forest Ecosystems Under a Changing Climate
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Meteorology and Climate Change".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 September 2026 | Viewed by 133
Special Issue Editors
Interests: forest ecology; ecological restoration; biogeography; biodiversity and ecosystem services
Interests: tropical forest ecology; ecological restoration; biogeography; biodiversity and ecosystem services; novel ecosystems; environmental policy
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Forest ecosystems are integral components of the global carbon cycle, functioning as major carbon sinks through net primary productivity and long-term carbon sequestration in aboveground biomass, belowground biomass, deadwood, litter, and soil organic carbon pools. Under ongoing climate change, the balance between gross primary productivity, ecosystem respiration, and net ecosystem productivity is being reshaped across biomes, with important implications for carbon residence time and ecosystem carbon use efficiency—i.e., forests may shift from being net carbon sinks to net sources of carbon emissions under intensified disturbance regimes and environmental stress caused by climate change.
Carbon dynamics are regulated by interacting with anthropogenic, environmental, and biotic drivers operating across spatial and temporal scales. These anthropogenic drivers, which may include deforestation, forest degradation, selective logging, land use and land cover change, fragmentation, and altered fire regimes, can directly reduce biomass carbon stocks and modify successional trajectories. Environmental drivers, including warming, altered precipitation regimes, increased vapor pressure deficit, drought frequency, permafrost thaw, and extreme climatic events, influence photosynthetic capacity, hydraulic functioning, tree mortality rates, and heterotrophic respiration, thereby affecting carbon turnover and soil carbon stabilization mechanisms. Biotic controls, such as species diversity and composition of tree community, functional trait diversity (including functional groups), stand structure, successional stage, disturbance legacy, pest and pathogen outbreaks, and plant–soil–microbe feedback, mediate aboveground and belowground carbon allocation patterns and biomass stock, as well as soil organic matter.
This Special Issue invites contributions that quantify carbon stocks and fluxes, assess disturbance impacts, model future carbon trajectories, and examine restoration and management strategies aimed at enhancing forest carbon sequestration and ecosystem resilience under global environmental change. Empirical, experimental, remote sensing, and process-based modeling studies across forest biomes are particularly encouraged.
Dr. Pedro Manuel Manuel Villa
Dr. Fabrício Alvim Carvalho
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
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 carbon cycle
- net ecosystem productivity
- carbon sequestration
- soil organic carbon
- land use change
- ecosystem respiration
- carbon residence time
- climate change
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