Forest Responses to Fires

Dear Colleagues,

Fire is a natural disturbance that plays an important role in numerous terrestrial ecosystems, being a key ecological factor for understanding the composition and structure of many forest environments around the world. However, the anthropogenic influence on the fire regime has become increasingly pronounced in recent decades as a result of climate change effects and land use changes, and the subsequent development of firefighting and fuel management. In this sense, the increase in temperatures and drought events in many areas of the world due to climate change has contributed to substantially increase the fire risk. This could even worsen in the coming decades, with large fires becoming increasingly frequent and reaching areas where they did not usually occur before.

This Special Issue invites contributions that report new research and findings about fire ecology and management in forest ecosystems, either through observational, experimental and applied studies, as well as syntheses and reviews. The focus of the studies can be broad, ranging from the response of soil biogeochemistry to fire to the effects of fire at the landscape level, as well as the ecophysiological and functional response of plants or population and community dynamics. The outputs of this Special Issue will be very helpful in order to establish future guidelines for the adaptation and management of forest ecosystems to face climate change and land use changes.

Dr. Antonio Parra
Dr. María Belén Hinojosa
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.

• climate change
• forest
• grassland
• land use change
• management
• prescribed fire
• shrubland
• wildfire