Impacts of Climate Extremes on Forests

Dear Colleagues,

Extreme climatic events are anomalous and abrupt changes in climate conditions, such as intense droughts, heat waves, cold spells and frosts. These events impact forest productivity, tree growth and vigor. If they are very intense or recurrent, these events can trigger forest decline and shape long-term forest dynamics. The study of the impacts of climate extremes on forests and the assessment of post-event resilience are fundamental issued to understanding, forecasting and better managing vulnerable forests, especially in those places where their intensity and frequency are expected to increase due to climate change, such as tree populations that represent a species’ geographic and climatic distribution limits.

Climate extremes have received abundant attention in recent years, but there are still many issues under discussion that require more effort. The objective of this Special Issue is to contribute to the filling of gaps in the research and to advance those issues that are under discussion, such as the appropriate methodology to evaluate the resistance and resilience of growth to these events, the factors that influence tree responses, the management alternatives that increase resilience or the effects of extreme climate events on growth and dynamics as a function of species, location, and future climatic conditions. Studies of multidisciplinary approaches combining several methodological tools and frameworks are welcome, as are those more focused on specific methods or disciplines. Articles based on remote sensing, tree-ring, inventory, monitoring, anatomical and ecophysiological data will be considered as well as those dealing with experimental approaches involving seedlings in greenhouses or provenance trials. Overall, we aim to disentangle how climate extremes impact forests and to detect potential interactions with other drivers of global change, including climate warming, rising atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, and increased N deposition.

Dr. Álvaro Rubio-Cuadrado
Dr. Jesús Julio Camarero
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.

• resistance
• resilience
• tree growth
• radial growth
• forest dynamics
• drought
• spring frost
• late frost