Climate-Ready Urban Park Forestry: Managing Tree Species for Measurable Carbon Benefits
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Forestry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 July 2026 | Viewed by 304
Special Issue Editors
Interests: albedo; radiative forcing; LCA; carbon footprint; building envelopes; climate change mitigation and adaptation
Interests: gas hydrates; sustainable development; energy saving; renewables; energy storage; environmental impact
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Mitigating the negative impacts of climate change in cities is now essential to protecting public well-being. Urban trees are among the most effective interventions for reducing the urban heat-island effect and improve microclimates. Beyond shading and evapotranspiration, their cooling can be expressed as CO₂-equivalent avoided emissions, complementing direct carbon sequestration. To support credible planning and management, there is a need for more accurate site- and species-specific estimation of these climate benefits, together with robust measurement, reporting, and verification.
Trees themselves are vulnerable: climate change is altering species composition, functioning, and distribution. Managing urban parks and municipal forests therefore requires climate-adaptive approaches that anticipate heat, drought, pests and pathogens, and changing disturbance regimes, while safeguarding multiple ecosystem services.
This Special Issue seeks contributions on climate change adaptation through the management of urban parks and municipal/urban forests, with links to planted and natural forests where relevant. It welcomes original research, reviews, methods and protocols, case studies, and policy/practice analyses on the following: biophysical impacts of climate change on urban trees; quantification of cooling and CO₂-compensated emissions; species selection and climate-smart silviculture; soil–water restoration; risk and safety; integrated pest and disease management; and decision-support tools for planning and monitoring. It aims to provide an up-to-date, globally relevant compendium to guide research, policy, and practice.
Dr. Alessia Di Giuseppe
Dr. Andrea Nicolini
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
- ecosystem services
- global warming
- nature-based solution
- urban heat island
- urban parks
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