Biodiversity-Ecosystem Functioning Relationships in Forest Ecosystems

Dear Colleagues,

Humanity’s domination of Earth’s ecosystems has led to excessive biodiversity loss and ecosystem function degradation. This loss of biodiversity is alarming, not only because of the inherent value of biodiversity itself, but also because biodiversity has consistently been shown to have a positive effect on ecosystem function and service provision. Forests cover about one-third of the global land surface and harbour most of the earth’s terrestrial biodiversity. There is increasing concern that biodiversity loss will lead to decreased ecosystem functioning in forests, such as primary productivty, nutrient cycling, and water quality. In addition, biodiversity is expected to buffer against the impacts of global environmental changes (e.g., rising atmospheric CO₂ concentration, warming, and altered precipitation). Therefore, understanding biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships in forest ecosystems is of great importance to develop strategies for both biodiversity conservation and mitigation of global environmental change.

This Special Issue is aimed at exploring the contribution of terrestrial forest biodiversity to the supply of ecosystem functions and to potentially mitigating the negative impacts of environmental change on forest ecosystems.

We encourage contributions from multiple potential topics including, but not limited to:

• Responses of forest biodiversity to climate change and anthropologic activities;
• Forest diversity and primary productivity/tree mortality;
• Forest biodiversity, soil microbial communities, and soil functioning;
• Forest diversity and carbon storage;
• The role of forest biodiversity in mitigating the impacts of environmental change.

Dr. Xinli Chen
Dr. Eric B. Searle
Dr. Masumi Hisano 
Dr. Chen Chen
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.