Pathways to “Carbon Neutralization” in Forest Ecosystems

Dear Colleagues, 

The concept of "carbon neutralization" has been around for nearly 18 years. At the same time, the Paris Agreement reached in December 2015 aims to limit the rise in global average temperature to 2℃ compared to pre-industrial levels, pushing "carbon neutralization" to the forefront. Therefore, it is very important to draw the attention of the international community to urgent issues such as climate change, low-carbon economies and policies, green energy and eco-technologies.

Forests Ecosystems are the main body of the terrestrial ecosystem, which can absorb and stabilize the CO₂ in the atmosphere continuously (2 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year), making it a huge carbon sink. Forming the main body of the terrestrial ecosystem, forests play a central role in the regional and global carbon cycles, and it can even be said that after achieving the goal of "carbon neutrality", human fossil fuel use (that is, carbon dioxide emissions) mainly depends on the size of the forest carbon sink; that is, the forest carbon sink plays a "neutral" role in fighting emmisions.

This research topic will cover multiple research fields related to forest ecosystem carbon neutrality, aiming to optimize the approach of "carbon neutrality", which is in line with the aims of Forests.

For this Research Topic, Original Research articles and Reviews are welcome. Potrential research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

1. Clarifying the spatio-temporal change pattern and environmental driving force mechanism of carbon sinks in typical forest ecosystems;
2. Investigating the interaction mechanism between forest carbon stock change, tree species diversity, and stand structure;
3. Studying management responses to formation, transformation, and stability of forest soil organic carbon for sequestration;
4. Proposing estimation methods for forest carbon storage and improving the potential of carbon neutrality, management technology, and countermeasures. 

Dr. Shuai Wang
Prof. Dr. Qianlai Zhuang
Prof. Dr. Fengkui Qian
Dr. Hui Li
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 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.

• forest carbon emission efficiency
• spatial association network
• carbon peak
• carbon neutralization
• carbon prediction model