Quantifying Impacts of Drought and Wildfire on Forest's Water and Carbon Resources
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Ecophysiology and Biology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2018)
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Global change is altering the conditions in which forests grow and regenerate through shifts in the availability of resources, disturbance dynamics, fragmentation, and distribution of species and/or genotypes. In many forest types, changes in climatic extremes are promoting shifts in wildfire and drought regimes and have the potential to diminish forest resilience and the stability of water and carbon resources. Recent examples of ‘mega-fire’ (e.g., Southeastern Australia, 2009) and ‘mega-drought’ events (e.g., California, 2011–2015) emphasise the potential for massive and lasting changes to forest structure and distribution and the flow on consequences for catchment water balance, carbon stocks and long-term sink strength. Such events and their impact on water and carbon cycling need to be understood, in terms of both the climatic drivers that help define exposure and the biophysical conditions and mechanisms that affect system sensitivity. Further, well-informed forest management and adaptation responses can help to minimise impact on these essential ecosystem services. Thus, evaluating long-term dynamics of water and carbon balance and the efficacy of forest management requires research approaches across many disciplines including; ecophysiology, micrometeorology, hydrology, ecology and scales of enquiry; leaf-level to global.
This Special Issue invites submissions based on experimental research, modelling, meta-analyses, syntheses and reviews, as well as new methods and approaches. Authors are encouraged to submit research papers on the following topics:
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Wildfire and/or drought influences on catchment hydrology and forest dynamics
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Consequences of wildfire on carbon balance including recovery dynamics
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Impacts of drought-induced forest mortality on water and carbon balance
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Advances in technical, remote-sensing and modelling approaches for quantifying changes in water and carbon balance
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The role of forest management practices in modulating water and carbon related impacts to wildfire and drought
Dr. Patrick Mitchell
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
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forest carbon balance
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ecohydrology
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drought mortality
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forest wildfire
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forest water use
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catchment hydrology
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carbon flux
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