Forest Landscape Cultural Values: Restoration, Management and Protection

Dear Colleagues,

Over the centuries, humankind have managed and utilized forests in different parts of the world, influencing the species composition, horizontal and vertical structures, as well as related ecosystem services. From an economic point of view, cultural forests have always provided multiple services and products to local communities, representing, at the same time, a crucial and effective space for the integration of biological and cultural diversity on a landscape scale. Traditional forest management can also contribute to the adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. For this reason, the term “cultural forests” has been recently introduced to represent forests in which historical relationships with human society have affected different characteristics. The characteristics of these forests are closely linked to the maintenance of silvicultural practices and to the active management of forest resources, rather than to the strict protection of natural values. Socio-cultural aspects have been recognized as crucial to sustainable forest management as per the document AGENDA 21, produced during the UN conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, as well as the Vienna resolution of  the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forest in Europe in 2003, now Forest Europe. Unfortunately, the intensification of forest utilization through mechanization and the abandonment of traditional forest management have degraded the cultural values of these forests, as little importance has been attributed to them.

The aim of this Special Issue is to collect papers addressing the restoration, management, and protection of forest cultural values in different parts of the world, both from the theoretical and practical point of view, favoring a transdisciplinary approach to the conservation of cultural values in forest landscapes.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Cultural forests;
• Forest history and historical ecology;
• Planning and management of cultural forest heritage;
• Restoration of cultural forests;
• Social, cultural, and spiritual values;
• Biocultural diversity.

Dr. Mauro Agnoletti
Guest Editor

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.

• forest landscape
• cultural values
• history
• spiritual values
• forest management