Assessing, Valuing, and Mapping Ecosystem Services

Dear Colleagues,

Ecosystem services (ESs) are the benefits that humans derive from nature, including nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, air and water filtration, and soil conservation. Many aspects, such as climate change, land use change, vegetational cover, and human activities, can have significant impacts on ESs. Forests play a dominant role in the global ecosystem. A wide range of ESs are provided by forests. Investigating land use patterns and vegetation cover (the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), the leaf area index (LAI), net primary productivity (NPP), etc.) is crucial to analyzing the benefits of forest-related ecosystems to humans, especially for carbon neutrality and sustainable development. The assessment and valuation of ESs can help us to understand the dynamic changes in ecosystems, perceive ecological risks, and formulate appropriate ecological restoration and protection strategies.

This Special Issue welcomes new data, methods, and findings on the following topics: (i) impact of land use changes (vegetation cover, fragmentation, land restoration, etc.) on forest-related ecosystem service provision; (ii) the quantification and the economic assessment of forest ESs (provisioning, regulating, and cultural services) and their trade-offs, synergies, as well as supply–demand analyses; (iii) impacts of policies and projects on forest-related ecosystem service provision. Original research and reviews aimed at understanding the spatio-temporal characteristics of ecological components, processes, functions, and patterns, as well as case studies integrating vegetation cover and ESs into policy decisions, are particularly encouraged.

Dr. Chao Wang
Prof. Dr. Xueting Zeng
Dr. Yuping Bai
Dr. Junlong Zhang
Prof. Dr. Davide M. Pettenella
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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-anonymized 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.