Biodiversity and Conservation of Forests
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Biodiversity".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 January 2023) | Viewed by 71308
Special Issue Editors
Interests: spatial analysis and modeling; wildlife ecology and management; protected area management; landscape analysis; geoinformatics; ecosystem services and functions
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: forest ecology; landscape ecology; biodiversity conservation; restoration ecology; fire ecology; urban landscapes
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Forests are extremely valuable ecosystems, associated with a number of ecosystem services of significant importance for human wellbeing. Although biodiversity conservation stands at the top of the list of desired ecosystem services, carbon storage, water regulation and supply, wood and non-wood products, recreation, soil protection, and nutrient cycling are also important. Forests harbor a large proportion of the global diversity of life, despite the relatively small part of the Earth that they cover. In recent decades, global forests have faced different and often contradicting challenges.
On one hand, the abandonment of land observed in Europe, North America, and elsewhere, which is associated with socioeconomic changes during the 20th century, provides an opportunity for degraded or even damaged forests to recover and reoccupy their pre-human areas. While this may result in a significant increase in forest cover and decrease in forest fragmentation, however, it may also lead to an increased degree of landscape homogeneity with negative impacts on local biodiversity.
On the other hand, extensive deforestation of the globally important tropical forests and land conversion to agriculture continues to occur, threatening the long-term sustainability of these biodiversity hotspots. This deforestation often occurs at large spatial scales without necessarily ensuring significant economic benefits, while the loss of habitats and biodiversity is undoubtedly huge.
All the above issues stress the need for sustainable forest management and for reconciling land management and socioeconomic development with the need for conserving the global biodiversity at all levels, from genetic variants to species, populations, and ecosystems. In this Special Issue, we seek scientifically sound manuscripts with relevance in at least one of the following topics: (1) sustainable forest management, (2) reconciling biodiversity with land abandonment, (3) preventing the deforestation of tropical forests, (4) state-of-the-art methods for monitoring the forest ecosystem’s ecological integrity and health, (5) wildlife conservation and socioeconomic development, and (6) forest fragmentation, connectivity, and their effects on ecological processes.
Dr. Konstantinos Poirazidis
Dr. Panteleimon Xofis
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.
Keywords
- Sustainable forest management
- Forest biodiversity conservation
- Forest monitoring
- Forest restoration
- Forest ecology
- Forest fragmentation and connectivity
- Human–wildlife conflicts
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