Dear Colleagues,

Climatic extremes have recently increased in magnitude and frequency and have triggered episodes of forest decline all around the globe. These episodes are characterized by extensive canopy defoliation, above-average tree mortality rates and impaired tree growth. In the last decade, the understanding of the physiological mechanisms involved in drought-induced growth decline and the process of tree death has improved enormously; however, we still lack predictive capacity from the ecological perspective. Trees are long-lived organisms and the forests they form are highly structured ecosystems with complex biotic interactions. For this reason, the factors predisposing, inciting and contributing to forest decline may operate at multi-seasonal or even decadal scales. The combination of drought episodes with an array of previous or subsequent climatic and ecological conditions may either exacerbate or dampen the effects of single events. The activity of insect and fungal pathogens would be enhanced by species-specific climatic constrains prior or after the drought episode. Similarly, the climate of the previous seasons and/or years before the drought favor certain structural forest characteristics and tree-level physiological and morphological changes, that would eventually determine the magnitude of drought effects at multiple levels. In this sense, structural characteristics of forests, such as tree density, species composition, stand basal area and leaf area are potentially relevant.

For this Special Issue, we invite manuscript submissions that aim to improve our knowledge of climate-induced forest declines with a special focus on one or several of the following questions:

1) How do forest structural characteristics interact with extreme drought episodes?

2) How does previous climate influence the magnitude of drought effects on forests?

3) Are successional trajectories accelerated or delayed by extreme droughts?

4) Is the activity of pathogens enhanced by the climate prior or posterior to an extreme drought episode?

Dr. Adrià Barbeta
Prof. Jofre Carnicer
Dr. Christian Zang
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 extremes

• tree-growth

• forest dieback

• forests resilience

• drought

• competition

• tree-rings

• canopy defoliation

• forest structure

• xylem phenology

• dendrometer

• site quality

• tree pathogens

• climatic feedbacks

• tree mortality