Urban Forests and Greening for Sustainable Cities

Dear Colleagues,

Urban forests and urban green spaces are an integral part of urban ecosystems. They can provide important ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, air pollution control, microclimate and urban water runoff regulation, urban biodiversity enhancement, and recreation. These ecosystem services can make a concrete contribution to improving quality of life and sustainable urban development. Despite a long history of landscaping and urban greening worldwide, the specific functions, agronomical, forestry, and technological aspects, the evaluation methodologies, and the environmental, social, and other benefits of urban forests and urban greening require up-to-date scientific studies and exchange of research experiences. For example, an under-explored and highly topical area of multidisciplinary research is "humane psychophysical well-being“regarding plant-human interaction at the urban scale.

This Special Issue invites contributions and reports new research and findings on the ecology and innovation aspects of urban forests and urban green spaces and their sustainable management. The focus of the studies may be broad, ranging from the agronomic response of plants to specific stress factors or the enhancement of their capacity to mitigate even the effects of climate change to the evaluation of new technologies and management methodologies. Studies on entomology, pathology of urban green spaces and forests, and plant–human interactions at the urban scale are also welcome.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Impacts of urban forests and urban greening on air, soil, and water;
• Urban greening strategies to increase biodiversity and ecological value in cities;
• Sustainable practices and technologies for urban forestry and urban greening;
• Innovative approaches to plant and canopy management in urban areas;
• Innovative approaches to plant pest management in urban environments;
• Designing urban forests and green spaces to promote ecological balance;
• Integrating urban green spaces to enhance biodiversity corridors;
• Entomofauna in urban environments;
• Ecosystem services provided by urban forests;
• Carbon balance in urban forests;
• The benefit of urban forests to urban climate.

Dr. Simona Aprile
Dr. Manuel Esperon-Rodriguez
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-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.