Soil Carbon Storage in Forests: Mechanisms, Dynamics, and Management

Dear Colleagues,

Soils store approximately three times more organic carbon than global terrestrial vegetation. Indeed, forests cover about one third of the global land area and contain the largest soil carbon pool among terrestrial biomes. Forest soil carbon dynamics thus have important feedbacks to the climate system via either sequestering or releasing CO₂. This Special Issue aims to present the most recent field and modelling studies to improve our understanding of the mechanisms and dynamics of soil carbon storage in natural and managed forest ecosystems. Special attention is paid to the impacts of climate warming, nitrogen deposition, rising CO₂ concentrations, land use changes, and other extreme disturbances (e.g., fire). In view of these global and regional forces, forest management options to increase soil carbon storage are increasingly in need, and relevant studies are also included in this Special Issue.

Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• Biotic and abiotic mechanisms of soil carbon storage;
• Spatial patterns and/or temporal trends in soil carbon storage;
• Soil carbon storage in response to climate warming;
• Soil carbon storage in response to nitrogen deposition;
• Soil carbon storage in response to rising CO₂ concentrations;
• Soil carbon storage in response to land use change;
• Soil carbon storage in response to extreme disturbances;
• Forest management options to increase soil carbon storage.

Dr. Enzai Du
Guest Editor

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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.