Carbon Sequestration, Climate Resilience, and Nature-Based Solutions in Forest Ecosystems

Dear Colleagues,

Global climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, and increasing anthropogenic pressures are rapidly reshaping forest ecosystems and altering their capacity to sequester and store carbon. Forests play a central role in achieving global climate mitigation targets, supporting biodiversity conservation, regulating hydrological cycles, and sustaining ecosystem services essential for human well-being. However, ongoing disturbances such as deforestation, forest fragmentation, wildfires, drought, invasive species, and unsustainable land-use practices are increasingly threatening the stability and resilience of forest carbon sinks.

Forest carbon dynamics are strongly influenced by plant functional traits, species composition, biodiversity patterns, microbial interactions, and the structure of ecological communities. Changes in these biological and ecological attributes, whether driven by climate extremes, land-use transformation, disturbance regimes, restoration initiatives, or conservation interventions, can substantially modify biomass accumulation, nutrient cycling, belowground carbon stabilization, and long-term soil carbon sequestration. In addition, emerging global challenges such as increasing atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, altered precipitation regimes, warming temperatures, and ecosystem degradation demand innovative and interdisciplinary approaches for understanding forest carbon processes across spatial and temporal scales.

Recent advances in remote sensing, ecosystem modeling, artificial intelligence, trait-based ecology, eddy covariance techniques, and soil microbial analyses are opening new opportunities to quantify, predict, and manage forest carbon dynamics under changing environmental conditions. Integrating ecological theory with climate adaptation and nature-based solutions is becoming increasingly important for improving forest resilience, enhancing carbon storage potential, and supporting sustainable development goals (SDGs) and international climate agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

This Special Issue aims to explore the complex relationships among plant functional traits, biodiversity, ecological processes, microbial interactions, climate resilience, and carbon cycling across diverse forest ecosystems. This Special Issue particularly welcomes innovative studies that combine field experiments, long-term monitoring, advanced modeling, remote sensing, molecular approaches, and interdisciplinary frameworks to improve our understanding of forest carbon sequestration and ecosystem sustainability under global environmental change. This Special Issue fully aligns with the scope of Plants by emphasizing plant ecology, ecosystem functioning, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable environmental management.

The major themes covered in this topic include the following:

• Contributions of plant functional traits, biodiversity, and species composition to above- and belowground carbon sequestration and climate resilience in forest ecosystems.
• Interactions among plant communities, microbial diversity, nutrient cycling, and soil carbon stabilization processes under changing environmental conditions.
• Roles of species diversity, functional trait variation, ecological networks, and community assembly mechanisms in regulating forest carbon cycling and ecosystem multifunctionality.
• Effects of reforestation, afforestation, mixed-species plantations, assisted natural regeneration, and restoration ecology on biomass accumulation and long-term carbon storage.
• Impacts of climate extremes, drought, forest fragmentation, wildfires, invasive species, and anthropogenic disturbances on forest carbon dynamics and ecosystem stability.
• Application of remote sensing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, ecosystem modeling, and long-term ecological observations for assessing carbon fluxes across environmental gradients.
• Nature-based solutions, climate-smart forestry, and trait-based indicators for enhancing ecosystem resilience, carbon neutrality, and sustainable forest management.
• Policy-relevant studies linking forest carbon sequestration with biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, and global climate mitigation strategies.

Dr. Ravi Chaturvedi
Guest Editor

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• carbon sequestration
• carbon storage
• climate resilience
• forest ecosystems
• biodiversity
• plant functional traits
• ecosystem multifunctionality
• nutrient cycling
• soil carbon
• restoration ecology
• nature-based solutions
• climate-smart forestry
• remote sensing
• ecosystem modeling
• microbial interactions
• carbon dynamics