Special Issue "Understanding the Vulnerability and Resiliency of Forest Ecosystems to Wildfire"

Dear Colleagues,

In the scenario of climate change, the impacts on ecosystems have significantly increased. In the context of forest ecosystems, climate change appears to be the key factor in increasing the risk, severity, and extent of wildfires. Changes in climate are expected to create warmer, drier conditions, which increase the vulnerability of forest to wildfire. Forest fires will be more frequent and intense, also affecting the resistance (immediate response) and resilience of forests, influencing their structure and processes.

Consequently, studies focusing on vulnerability and resilience of forest ecosystems to wildfire are currently leading topics in research. Vulnerability is defined as an estimate of the inability of the ecosystem to tolerate impacts (susceptibility to exposure and immediate response capacity). Ecological resilience is the capacity of the ecosystem to recover structure and processes after disturbance. However, new adaptive and transformative resilience approaches also promote the creation of new forest systems when returning to pre-fire conditions is unlikely or unsustainable. Vulnerability and resilience analysis provide a first understanding of the pre-fire state and post-fire dynamics, but it is also necessary to analyze and develop appropriate management tools (pre-fire and post-fire forest management) to reduce forest vulnerability to fire and promote new resilience (adaptive or transformative) to ensure the maintenance of forest resources and processes.

Forest management tools that affect forest responses and post-fire dynamics include forest planning, silvicultural practices such as thinning (including biomass management and fuel models) or clearing shrubs, control of species density, prescribed burning, or post-fire forest restoration (vegetation and soils). These tools may be included in the studies on vulnerability and resilience of forest to fire in the current climate change scenario.

Prof. Dr. Francisco Antonio García-Morote
Dr. Teresa Fidalgo Fonseca
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 2000 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.

• indicators of forest vulnerability and resilience to wildfire
• post-fire vegetation dynamics
• forest plannings and land use
• silvicultural treatments and adaptive forest management
• post-fire management and forest restoration
• processes in burned forests: C cycle, hydrology, soil erosion and conservation
• models that address the impact of wildfire on forest dynamics