Forest genetic resources face a large number of increasing threats. Climate change, air pollution, unsustainable forest management, invasive species, urbanization and forest fragmentation reduce forest biodiversity, may adversely affect genetic diversity and put at threat the future adaptive potential and sustainability of European forests and their ecosystems. Information on relevant changes of a species and/or populations’ adaptive and neutral genetic variation through time caused by management and conservation measures is needed. This information can only be obtained through genetic monitoring, which serves as an early warning system to aid the assessment of a species response to environmental change at a long-term temporal scale. With genetic monitoring, temporal changes in population genetic variation can be measured by appropriate parameters and thereby form a special part of biomonitoring, contributing to biological conservation.

This Research Topics expected to present review and original research contributions highlighted as:
• Possible scenarios of climate change effects on forest growth and species distribution
• Hidden biodiversity, such as belowground and genetic diversity, enabling forest adaptability to future climates
• Landscape genomics approaches in silvicultural practices
• Forest genetic resources of marginal and peripheral populations – conservation and monitoring of rear edge and in disjunct populations
• The role and the future of forest genetic monitoring in conservation of forest genetic resources and the future forests
• Forest genetic monitoring regions in time and space
• Epigenetics and functional genomics roles in preventing forest loss in changing climates
• The science-policy interface in definition of measures for genetic protection of forests.

Keywords: Climate Change, Forest Genetic Monitoring, Forest Loss, Conservation, Biomonitoring

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.