Dear Colleagues,

In the last century, accelerated ecosystem transformations have been identified as one of the major environmental problems at the global scale. Urbanization, industrialization, land abandonment and the overexploitation of natural resources have been regarded as relevant factors underlying land use changes. The human impact on the environment is very relevant because it is related to phenomena leading to climate change, land degradation and social changes, often acting in combination with each other and intensifying the effect. In particular biodiversity loss is one of the main phenomenon that confronts humankind when dealing with the sustainable management of natural resources. The loss of biodiversity and the reduction of the efficiency of related ecosystem services entail social and economic costs that affect not only environmental sustainability but also human well-being. Within this context, forests represent important reservoirs of flora and fauna biodiversity at all levels: from old-growth forests to agroforestry systems or to urban forests.

Over the last decades, numerous studies have highlighted the important role played by forests in maintaining a high degree of biological diversity, as well as the maintenance of mitigation and adaptation functions to climate change. At the same time they shed light on the main threats such as: wildfires, plant pathologies, habitat fragmentation, invasive alien species, the low consideration of ecosystem services, the inadequacy of planning and management tools and of monitoring programs. All these factors impact the fragile forest ecosystem. The great advances in scientific analysis have improved the measurement of land use change, the understanding of the causes, and the development of predictive models. Predicting how land-use changes affect forest ecosystems requires a good understanding of the human–environment interactions associated with land-use change. This Special Issue aims to gather emerging scientific research conducted in the framework of the land use change of forest ecosystems and the impact on biodiversity conducted across regions and scales, as well as the implications on which to base forest management and monitoring programs.

Dr. Daniela Smiraglia
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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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.

• Global change
• Fragmentation
• Land vulnerability
• Monitoring
• Sustainable management
• Ecosystem services
• Change detection