Modeling of Species Distribution and Biodiversity in Forests

Dear Colleagues,

Understanding patterns of biodiversity and their relationship with environmental gradients is a key issue in ecological research and conservation in forests. Indeed, several environmental factors are able to influence species distributions in these complex ecosystems. It is therefore essential to distinguish among the effects of natural factors from the anthropogenic ones (e.g., environmental pollution, climate change, forest management) by adopting reliable models able to predict future scenarios of species distribution.

In the last 20 years, the use of statistical tools such as species distribution models or ecological niche models has allowed making great strides in the subject, with hundreds of scientific studies in this field.

In this Forests Special Issue, entitled “Modeling of Species Distribution and Biodiversity in Forests”, we aim to collect the timely and emerging research in this field. We encourage researchers to send contributions (research and review articles) on the following topics:

• Climate change and the distribution of sensitive species or species assemblages;
• Modelling the effects of forest fragmentation on biodiversity;
• Determining the risk of species invasions by means of modeling approaches;
• Modelling functional traits and indicator species;
• Environmental niche models and species conservation;
• Methodological aspects of species distribution models (SDM);
• Recommendations and guidelines to select the most appropriate model;
• The drawbacks connected with the issue of species presence-only data and pseudo-absences.

Dr. Giorgio Brunialti
Dr. Luisa Frati
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.