We are pleased to announce that Dr. Olga Viedma was appointed Section Editor-in-Chief for the Section “Forest Inventory, Modeling and Remote Sensing”.

Dr. Olga Viedma is an assistant professor of Environmental and Land Planning at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Her main interest is focused on ecological responses to wildfires in a context of climate change and other changes such as land use-land cover or the socio-economy of fire-affected areas. She works on new methodologies for mapping fires from satellite images, analysis of spatiotemporal patterns of forest fires, post-fire effects by satellite and LiDAR; and spatio-temporal modeling of historical land use-land cover changes related to fire hazard. She has carried out digital mapping of land use changes since the 1950s, and forest fires from the 1970s to the present, from satellite images and historical cartography. She also has modeled the different roles played by physiographic, climatic, and socio-economic conditions in the abandonment of agricultural activities over time. On the other hand, through selectivity analysis and randomization processes, she has determined the different preferences of fires towards land use and changes (abandonment, reforestation, densification, etc). She has also analyzed the effect of changes in land uses, climate, physiography, and socio-economics on the occurrence of fires from the 1970s to the present using temporarily explicit models (analysis of longitudinal data) and satellite data. Another important line of research is based on estimating the severity of fire and biomass consumed using field data, satellite image, and LiDAR data; as well as identifying the factors that control fire severity.

We are confident that the strong academic background and connections of Dr. Viedma will help to continue raising Forests' prestige and quality, while maintaining the efficiency of manuscript processing that Forests authors have come to expect.