Forests of the Future: Ecosystem Resilience, Adaptation and Sustainable Management in an Era of Change

Forests are changing rapidly under the combined influence of climate change, altered disturbance regimes and land-use legacies. Forest management is challenged by the need to balance multiple demands for ecosystem services such as timber production, biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, climate adaptation and societal needs. In many regions, these drivers have already impacted on tree growth pattern, regeneration processes, species composition and forest structure.

This Research Topic is developed in connection with the International Scientific Conference Forests of the Future: Research and Forest Management in an Era of Change. It aims to bring together research from different forest ecosystems and management contexts and to improve our understanding of how forests respond to environmental change and how management can support their resilience and long-term functioning.

Despite considerable progress in forest ecology and management, an important gap remains between our understanding of ecological responses to environmental change and the practical application of this knowledge in forest management. Climate impacts, disturbance, biodiversity loss, regeneration, forest productivity and carbon dynamics are often studied separately, although forest managers increasingly need approaches that consider these processes together.

There is also much to learn from primary and old-growth forests, long-term ecological observations and comparisons between unmanaged, seminatural and managed stands. Advances in remote sensing, modelling and other monitoring technologies are providing new opportunities to detect and understand forest change across different spatial and temporal scales.

The main goal of this Research Topic is therefore to connect ecological understanding with practical forest management. We are particularly interested in studies examining forest resistance, recovery and adaptation, as well as research testing how silvicultural interventions for restoration, structural diversification, species change and other management activities can influence future forest resilience. Particular attention will be given to studies that provide lessons that can be applied beyond individual sites or case studies.

The collection will cover ecological, management, technological and policy dimensions of forest resilience and sustainable management. We welcome Original Research, Reviews, Systematic Reviews, Perspectives, Methods, and Policy and Practice Reviews.

Suggested themes include:
• primary and old-growth forests, habitat continuity, biodiversity and structural complexity;
• forest responses to drought, heat, fire, storms, pests and other disturbances;
• adaptive silviculture, thinning, uneven-aged and close-to-nature forest management;
• mixed-species forests, regeneration, provenance selection and tree adaptation;
• forest growth, mortality, succession and long-term vegetation dynamics;
• afforestation, reforestation, restoration and post-disturbance recovery;
• forest carbon storage, biomass dynamics and climate-change mitigation;
• forest soils, below-ground processes and ecosystem functioning;
• remote sensing, LiDAR, dendroecology and long-term ecological monitoring;
• process-based modelling, machine learning and other digital approaches to forest assessment;
• ecosystem services, human well-being, stakeholder perspectives and forest policy;
• science-based approaches to sustainable and multifunctional forest management.

Comparative studies across forest types, climatic regions and management systems, as well as long-term datasets and experimental research, are particularly encouraged.

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: forest resilience, climate change adaptation, sustainable forest management, adaptive silviculture, old-growth forests, biodiversity, forest restoration, forest carbon, disturbance ecology, remote sensing

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.