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Forests
Special Issues
Post-Fire Recovery and Monitoring of Forest Ecosystems
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Post-Fire Recovery and Monitoring of Forest Ecosystems

A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Natural Hazards and Risk Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 January 2026 | Viewed by 505

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Emiliya Velizarova

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Ministry of Environment and Water, Sofia, Bulgaria
Interests: drought stress; forest fire; response to fire impact

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Due to the utmost importance of developing and implementing appropriate strategies for forest regeneration and recovery after fires via natural or assisted processes, we are pleased to invite you to submit your contributions to this Special Issue, ‘Post-Fire Recovery and Monitoring of Forest Ecosystems’. This Special Issue aims to cover recent state-of-the-art research on burn severity, hydrological impacts, changes in plant and animal communities over time after forest fires, soil erosion, remote sensing, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity recovery, among others. High levels of biodiversity have been associated with complex early seral forests, called "snag forests", which are as biodiverse as old growth. A multitude of bird and insect species require high-severity burn patches of snag forests recovered from the green forests during a severe fire event. In this regard, this Special Issue also intends to cover biodiversity dependence on severely burned areas: What species depend on them, in what regions, and in what patch sizes and frequencies? This Special Issue intends to publish original research articles and medium-sized review papers related to novel developments or achievements in this field. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: the loss of topsoil due to weakened vegetation cover, the use of satellite images and drones to assess burn severity and monitor vegetation recovery, the restoration of ecological functions in burned areas, etc. We look forward to receiving your valuable contributions.

Dr. Emiliya Velizarova
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.

Keywords

  • burn severity
  • soil erosion
  • ash deposition
  • hydrological impact
  • carbon sequestration
  • resilience and vegetation regrowth
  • reforestation
  • succession and biodiversity recovery
  • biodiversity recovery of snag forests
  • remote sensing
  • long-term monitoring

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

19 pages, 1994 KB  
Article
Comparison of Plantation Arrangements and Naturally Regenerating Mixed-Conifer Stands After a High-Severity Fire in the Sierra Nevada
by Iris Allen, Sophan Chhin, Jianwei Zhang and Michael Premer
Forests 2025, 16(10), 1506; https://doi.org/10.3390/f16101506 - 23 Sep 2025
Viewed by 287
Abstract
A sharp escalation in wildfire frequency, severity, and scale in the western United States calls for the creation of forests that are resilient in the future. One reforestation method involves clustering trees into groups of two to four, instead of creating evenly spaced [...] Read more.
A sharp escalation in wildfire frequency, severity, and scale in the western United States calls for the creation of forests that are resilient in the future. One reforestation method involves clustering trees into groups of two to four, instead of creating evenly spaced plantations, in an effort to increase structural heterogeneity and emulate natural regeneration patterns. There have been a limited number of studies on clustered plantations, and this study addresses this important research gap. In Eldorado National Forest in the Sierra Nevada, we compared growth and structure in several post-fire plantations, treated with and without pre-commercial thinning (PCT), and naturally regenerating stands. Using mixed-effects models, we tested for growth and structural differences between evenly spaced and clustered plantations, as well as comparing them to stands of naturally regenerating trees. Our results indicated that diameter and height growth were generally better maintained in the plantations compared to under natural stand conditions. When considering plantation arrangement, the annual basal area increment (BAI) thinning index ([BAI after thinning − BAI before thinning]/BAI before thinning) was generally higher in evenly spaced plantations (1.03) compared to clustered plantations (0.79). While high plant diversity would be important eventually from an ecological perspective, our study suggests that during the initial phases of plantation development, lower shrub diversity could assist with plantation establishment and growth. The frequency of yellow pines was an important, positively associated factor affecting BAI and height growth, but primarily in the high-elevation region, which demonstrates a facilitative legacy effect of prior stand composition. Our study highlighted the important legacy effect of prior stand density on the growth of yellow pines, but primarily in the low-elevation region, and only when the two plantation groups were examined. The negative association suggests that a lower initial density of plantations promotes better BAI growth and height growth after PCT. These findings thus have broad implications for effective post-fire restoration of young plantations to help ensure their future resilience to both post-fire restoration and climate change adaptation and biotic (i.e., plant competition) stress factors. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Post-Fire Recovery and Monitoring of Forest Ecosystems)
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