Sustaining Planted Forest Ecosystems Under Climate Change: Soil and Hydrological Processes

Planted forest ecosystems, created through afforestation, reforestation, or plantation forestry, now cover close to 300 million hectares worldwide. They are central to global carbon sequestration, timber production, and ecological restoration, and they shape regional water cycles well beyond their own boundaries. Climate change is testing that role. Rising temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, intensified drought, and more frequent extreme events act directly on the soil and hydrological processes that keep these systems productive.

Soil sits at the center of this. It is the primary reservoir of organic carbon and the medium through which water, nutrients, and gases are exchanged. Hydrological fluxes such as infiltration, runoff, evapotranspiration, and groundwater recharge determine tree growth, ecosystem resilience, and downstream water availability. Despite decades of research, the coupled response of soil biogeochemistry and hydrology in these systems to changing climatic conditions remains poorly resolved.

The open questions are pressing and practical. How does prolonged drought alter soil microbial activity and carbon mineralization rates? How do shifts in rainfall intensity modify runoff generation and nutrient leaching in monospecific plantations compared with mixed-species stands? Management adds a further layer, as thinning, fertilization, and irrigation interact with climatic drivers, to create feedback loops that are difficult to predict. Understanding these interactions is essential for forecasting productivity, managing water resources, and designing climate-smart silviculture.

The goal of this Research Topic is to systematically investigate how climate change alters soil and hydrological processes in planted forest ecosystems, and to identify adaptive management pathways that sustain both productivity and ecological function. We are particularly interested in the thresholds that trigger changes in carbon storage, and in how hydrological models can better represent species-specific water-use strategies. Recent advances in high-resolution monitoring (e.g., eddy covariance, soil sensor networks), isotope tracing, and process-based modeling now make it possible to separate these interacting effects. By integrating observational, experimental, and modeling approaches, we aim to generate actionable insights that mitigate climate risk and strengthen the contribution of planted forest ecosystems to ecosystem, services and to Sustainable Development Goals 13 (Climate Action), 15 (Life on Land), and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals).

This Research Topic welcomes contributions on any aspect of soil and hydrology in planted forest ecosystems under climate change. Themes include but are not limited to:

• Soil organic carbon dynamics and stabilization mechanisms
• Soil microbial communities and their functional responses to drought/warming
• Evapotranspiration partitioning and water-use efficiency
• Runoff generation, infiltration, and groundwater recharge under altered precipitation regimes
• Nutrient cycling (N, P) and its coupling with water fluxes
• Modeling soil–water–vegetation interactions at stand to landscape scales
• Impacts of forest management (thinning, species selection, irrigation) on soil–hydrological resilience
• Interactions between climate extremes and soil erosion or salinization
• Interactions between planted stands and the atmosphere, where mediated by soil water

We particularly encourage multi-site and comparative studies, work using long-term monitoring datasets, and contributions from biomes and regions under-represented in the planted forest literature.

All submissions must be set in planted forest systems and keep soil or hydrological processes central to the analysis. Agricultural, urban, and other non-forest systems fall outside the scope, as do purely hydrological, plant ecological, or animal ecological studies with no clear link to soil functioning. Work on growth, yield, or silvicultural performance qualifies only where soil and water processes drive the analysis. Purely observational studies are not considered, except well-founded work from poorly investigated biomes. Manuscripts should offer mechanistic insight rather than description alone.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Planted forest ecosystems; soil hydrology; afforestation; climate change; soil carbon sequestration; water-use efficiency; evapotranspiration; nutrient cycling; forest management adaptation

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.