Sustainable Practices in Watershed Management and Ecological Restoration

Dear Colleagues,

Through the development of land for agriculture and other human activities, humankind has conquered more than 40% of the area of all continents. Today, we know that future generations will inherit affected environmental systems. However, few people know how to adequately assess the consequences of their behavior on a watershed scale. It is time to identify traceable practices that can impact future human development in relation to dynamic environmental conditions. Sustainability acts as a point of convergence where human practices can be examined in terms of their supportive capacity over a long period of time.

It is important to emphasize that there are sustainable solutions to the problems created in the current century, mainly due to destructive anthropogenic activities. At odds with sustainable development is the current approach to watershed resource management. It is necessary to shift to a new paradigm in land management and restoration approaches.

Sustainable practices can help regenerate land as well as maintaining long-term stability in the watershed balance, with sufficient resources. For instance, one of the sustainable practices includes rainwater and surface water protection on land using the implementation of systems with desirable measures to increase the water retention capacity in an entire watershed (often with erosion control measures). Considering people's participation as a core component of these watershed management practices guarantees sustainability. Towards this, the objective of this Special Issue is to explore the practices and strategies successfully involved in sustainable watershed management and ecological restoration in different parts of the world.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Adaptive watershed management;
• Climate change mitigation;
• Ecological sustainability;
• Eco-security analysis;
• Indigenous knowledge;
• Innovative approaches;
• Nature governance;
• Participatory management;
• Policy and decision making;
• Rainfall–runoff balance;
• Resilient conservation;
• Socio-hydrological systems;
• Sustainable restoration.

Dr. Zeinab Hazbavi
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 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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2400 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.