Advancing Climate-Resilient Forestry: Novel Strategies for Conservation and Restoration

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change is rapidly reshaping forest ecosystems worldwide, altering species dynamics, disturbance regimes, and key ecological processes. This Special Issue seeks cutting-edge research that moves beyond traditional vulnerability assessments to define and enable proactive, climate-resilient forestry.

We invite submissions proposing innovative strategies for conservation, restoration, and adaptive forest management that strengthen biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and socio-ecological resilience under future climates.

We particularly welcome interdisciplinary contributions that integrate empirical evidence, modeling approaches, or emerging technologies to address cross-scale challenges. Studies linking science, policy, and practice, and comparative analyses across biomes, are highly encouraged.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Strategies and Concepts:

Nature-based solutions, climate-smart forestry, adaptive silviculture, ecological restoration, assisted migration, disturbance dynamics, and resilience-oriented management frameworks.

2. Tools and Methods:

Machine learning and AI-driven analytics, remote sensing and GIS applications, climate and species distribution modeling, genomic and genetic tools for resilience assessment, and innovative long-term monitoring frameworks.

3. Social and Policy Dimensions:

Socio-ecological resilience, community-based and Indigenous forest management, governance and policy frameworks under climate uncertainty, economic incentives, and stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-production.

4. Resilience of Threatened Species and Ecosystems

Species at risk across local to global scales, threatened forest ecosystems (tropical, temperate, boreal, dryland, mountain, and urban), ecological transitions and tipping points, functional trait and ecophysiological responses, and interregional or landscape-scale comparative studies.

We appreciate your interest in this Special Issue. Authors are welcome to submit their manuscripts directly, and those who prefer to check the fit of their work may optionally send a brief abstract to the Editors. We look forward to your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Pablo Antúnez
Prof. Dr. Christian Wehenkel
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-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.