Managing Forests for Multiple Ecosystem Services under Changing Climate

Dear Colleagues,

Forests are one of the planet’s critical ecosystems. Forest ecosystems provide a multitude of goods such as timber and biomass, mushroom and berries, medicinal herbs and ecosystem services such as water purification, recreation, carbon sequestration and habitats for flora and fauna. Forests also harbor a large share of the planet´s biodiversity. Multipurpose forest management is aiming at the provision of a portfolio of goods and services depending on the demand and interests of landowners and other stakeholders. Moreover, forests are included in international treaties on biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation and thus have to meet the requirements of national governments. Forests also play a key role in providing raw material for a circular bioeconmy. Which portfolios of goods and services are feasible and efficient depends on trade-offs among ecosystem services. Climate change is and will continue to affect forest ecosystems and thus the provisioning of ecosystem services. Climate change impacts and related adaptation needs will shift trade-off relationships among demanded ecosystem services and will thus impose major challenges for forest management.     

For the proposed Special Issue, we invite contributions on the following topics as pertaining to forest ecosystems worldwide:

• Potentials and limitations of current management approaches to provide multiple ecosystem services
• Impact of climate-change-related emerging ecological, socio-economic and political issues on ecosystem service valuation
• Impact of multipurpose management concepts on the integrity of ecological structures and functions in forests, and how these are linked to specific ecosystem services
• Case studies of management options for multiple services in private, community-owned and state-owned forests
• Climate change impacts on ecosystem service provisioning in multipurpose forests
• Disturbance regimes and implications for ecosystem services
• Decision support tools for multipurpose forest management
• Governance approaches to secure multiple ecosystem service provisioning
• Ecosystem services for circular bioeconomy

Prof. Dr. Shuirong Wu
Prof. Dr. Manfred J. Lexer
Dr. Xufeng Zhang
Dr. Jo van Brusselen
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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.

• multipurpose forest management
• ecosystem services provision and valuation
• trade-offs and synergies
• payment for ecosystem services (PES)
• climate change impacts
• disturbances
• forest resilience
• forest planning
• forest governance
• bioeconomy