**Preface to "Agroforestry-Based Ecosystem Services"**

With 21 papers and an editorial overview published, more than a hundred authors involved, and contributions from tropical Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the response to this Special Issue exceeded initial expectations. The collection of papers is not a comprehensive, encyclopedic treatment of the topic, but it provides little gemstones of case studies on a good cross-section of the social and ecological issues that are part of the current debate. The collection can serve as teaching material for interdisciplinary courses on land-use science and may provide inspiration (and specific hypotheses) for further research by graduate students or researchers interested in use-oriented science.

Although the call for contributions was not explicit on the geographical focus of the contributed papers, the resulting focus on (sub)tropical case studies probably reflects the historical development of agroforestry science, where attention to temperate regions only took off after two decades of tropical research. Temperate-zone agroforestry is now a flourishing field of research, so future compilations may become more geographically balanced.

Acknowledgements are due to the positive responses of all authors in their initial submissions and subsequent revisions, the many (mostly anonymous) reviewers, other members of the *Land* editorial board, and the professional services by the MDPI publisher.

> **Meine van Noordwijk** *Editor*
