Dear Colleagues,

Forests present great ecological value and provide a wide range of ecosystem services, which are essential for natural and human activities. Therefore, forest management requires a good knowledge of both the ecological and economic processes. Sustainable forest management is concerned with the enhancement of various forest-related functions and, regardless of the purpose given to a forest and its products and services, it is undeniable that the end result should generate maximum utility. Managers’ choices are conditioned by economy and often change the ability of forests to produce resources for future generations, which should be maintained. Moreover, several risks, including forest fire occurrence, must be considered.

Most of the technical and scientific information generated over the last few decades seems to present several gaps regarding effective forest management. The development of decision support systems for forest management and fire prevention, and the inclusion of multiple criteria decision analysis techniques are crucial. This Special Issue encourages the submission of studies from several fields for contributions regarding forest management. These contributions may include methodological papers, practical applications, decision making issues, etc. In addition to this, we would like to receive studies that promote the integration of different ecosystem services into forest management, decision-making processes through quantitative models, multiple criteria decision analysis, and group decision-making models.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Sustainable forest management;
• Forest economics;
• Forest industry analysis;
• Ecosystem services provided by forests;
• Forestry and climate change;
• Models for forest management;
• Decision support systems;
• Economic valuation;
• Forest fire management;
• Multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA);
• Group decision models for forest management.

Dr. António Manuel de Sousa Xavier
Dr. Rui Manuel de Sousa Fragoso
Dr. Maria De Belém Costa Freitas
Guest Editors

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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.

• forest management
• forest policy
• decision support systems
• ecosystem services
• forest economics
• ecosystem services
• models
• multiple criteria decision analysis