Quantifying Impacts of Drought and Wildfire on Forest's Water and Carbon Resources

A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Ecophysiology and Biology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2018)

Special Issue Editor

CSIRO Agriculture and Food, Hobart 7003, Australia
Interests: forest growth; plant water relations; climate adaptation; ecohydrology; drought

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Global change is altering the conditions in which forests grow and regenerate through shifts in the availability of resources, disturbance dynamics, fragmentation, and distribution of species and/or genotypes. In many forest types, changes in climatic extremes are promoting shifts in wildfire and drought regimes and have the potential to diminish forest resilience and the stability of water and carbon resources. Recent examples of ‘mega-fire’ (e.g., Southeastern Australia, 2009) and ‘mega-drought’ events (e.g., California, 2011–2015) emphasise the potential for massive and lasting changes to forest structure and distribution and the flow on consequences for catchment water balance, carbon stocks and long-term sink strength. Such events and their impact on water and carbon cycling need to be understood, in terms of both the climatic drivers that help define exposure and the biophysical conditions and mechanisms that affect system sensitivity. Further, well-informed forest management and adaptation responses can help to minimise impact on these essential ecosystem services. Thus, evaluating long-term dynamics of water and carbon balance and the efficacy of forest management requires research approaches across many disciplines including; ecophysiology, micrometeorology, hydrology, ecology and scales of enquiry; leaf-level to global.

This Special Issue invites submissions based on experimental research, modelling, meta-analyses, syntheses and reviews, as well as new methods and approaches. Authors are encouraged to submit research papers on the following topics:

  • Wildfire and/or drought influences on catchment hydrology and forest dynamics

  • Consequences of wildfire on carbon balance including recovery dynamics

  • Impacts of drought-induced forest mortality on water and carbon balance

  • Advances in technical, remote-sensing and modelling approaches for quantifying changes in water and carbon balance

  • The role of forest management practices in modulating water and carbon related impacts to wildfire and drought

Dr. Patrick Mitchell
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.

Keywords

  • forest carbon balance

  • ecohydrology

  • drought mortality

  • forest wildfire

  • forest water use

  • catchment hydrology

  • carbon flux

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

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Review
Impacts of Global Change on Mediterranean Forests and Their Services
by Josep Peñuelas, Jordi Sardans, Iolanda Filella, Marc Estiarte, Joan Llusià, Romà Ogaya, Jofre Carnicer, Mireia Bartrons, Albert Rivas-Ubach, Oriol Grau, Guille Peguero, Olga Margalef, Sergi Pla-Rabés, Constantí Stefanescu, Dolores Asensio, Catherine Preece, Lei Liu, Aleixandre Verger, Adrià Barbeta, Ander Achotegui-Castells, Albert Gargallo-Garriga, Dominik Sperlich, Gerard Farré-Armengol, Marcos Fernández-Martínez, Daijun Liu, Chao Zhang, Ifigenia Urbina, Marta Camino-Serrano, Maria Vives-Ingla, Benjamin D. Stocker, Manuela Balzarolo, Rossella Guerrieri, Marc Peaucelle, Sara Marañón-Jiménez, Kevin Bórnez-Mejías, Zhaobin Mu, Adrià Descals, Alejandro Castellanos and Jaume Terradasadd Show full author list remove Hide full author list
Forests 2017, 8(12), 463; https://doi.org/10.3390/f8120463 - 24 Nov 2017
Cited by 97 | Viewed by 20250
Abstract
The increase in aridity, mainly by decreases in precipitation but also by higher temperatures, is likely the main threat to the diversity and survival of Mediterranean forests. Changes in land use, including the abandonment of extensive crop activities, mainly in mountains and remote [...] Read more.
The increase in aridity, mainly by decreases in precipitation but also by higher temperatures, is likely the main threat to the diversity and survival of Mediterranean forests. Changes in land use, including the abandonment of extensive crop activities, mainly in mountains and remote areas, and the increases in human settlements and demand for more resources with the resulting fragmentation of the landscape, hinder the establishment of appropriate management tools to protect Mediterranean forests and their provision of services and biodiversity. Experiments and observations indicate that if changes in climate, land use and other components of global change, such as pollution and overexploitation of resources, continue, the resilience of many forests will likely be exceeded, altering their structure and function and changing, mostly decreasing, their capacity to continue to provide their current services. A consistent assessment of the impacts of the changes, however, remains elusive due to the difficulty of obtaining simultaneous and complete data for all scales of the impacts in the same forests, areas and regions. We review the impacts of climate change and other components of global change and their interactions on the terrestrial forests of Mediterranean regions, with special attention to their impacts on ecosystem services. Management tools for counteracting the negative effects of global change on Mediterranean ecosystem- services are finally discussed. Full article
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