Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
4.5
2.9
Journals
Forests
Special Issues
Long Term Dynamics of Conifer Forests
share announcement

Long Term Dynamics of Conifer Forests

A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Ecology and Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (22 July 2022) | Viewed by 4564

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Federico Di Rita

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
Interests: palynology; vegetation history; paleoclimate; human impact on forests; coastal environments; quaternary
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. James Raymond Peter Worth

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Forest Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Tsukuba, Japan
Interests: conservation genetics; fossil record; phylogeography; molecular ecology; species distribution modelling
Dr. Donatella Magri

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
Interests: paleobiogeography; quaternary refugia; plant extinction; past climate impacts; species migration

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Conifers represent a systematically well-defined group of seed plants, with a well understood distribution encompassing all continents except Antarctica. Some areas of the world are characterized by few species with almost pan-continental distributions, dominating entire biomes such as in the Northern Hemisphere. Conversely, other regions are occupied by a multitude of conifer species with highly fragmented ranges, such as the Pacific Ocean Rim. This may reflect the legacy of long-term forest dynamics influenced by evolutionary, biotic, climatic, and anthropic processes, the knowledge of which can make a crucial contribution to more appropriate and effective conservation strategies. Many aspects of the long-term dynamics of conifer forests are of interest, including extinction, persistence, genetic differentiation, range fragmentation, vicariance, migration, and adaptive capacity. This Special Issue aims to investigate these topics through the collation of research articles based on palaeoecological, biogeographic, genetic, and phylogeographical approaches.

We welcome contributions on the dynamics of conifer populations/species from local to continental scales with temporal resolution from millions of years to decades, aimed at defining the processes leading to their current spatial distribution, and better understanding the genetic and ecological characteristics of conifer forests.

Dr. Federico Di Rita
Dr. James Raymond Peter Worth
Dr. Donatella Magri
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.

Keywords

  • paleoecology
  • biogeography
  • forest conservation
  • tree genetics
  • persistence
  • extinction
  • vulnerability
  • adaptation

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

20 pages, 6122 KiB  
Article
Conifer Forest Dynamics in the Iberian Pyrenees during the Middle Ages
by Valentí Rull and Teresa Vegas-Vilarrúbia
Forests 2021, 12(12), 1685; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/f12121685 - 01 Dec 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3710
Abstract
This study compares the Medieval (ca. 400–1500 CE; Common Era) dynamics of forests from low-mountain (Montcortès; ca. 1000 m a.s.l.) and high-mountain (Sant Maurici; 1900 m a.s.l.) areas of the Iberian Pyrenees, both of which experienced similar climatic forcing but different anthropogenic pressures. [...] Read more.
This study compares the Medieval (ca. 400–1500 CE; Common Era) dynamics of forests from low-mountain (Montcortès; ca. 1000 m a.s.l.) and high-mountain (Sant Maurici; 1900 m a.s.l.) areas of the Iberian Pyrenees, both of which experienced similar climatic forcing but different anthropogenic pressures. The main aim is to identify forest changes over time and associate them with the corresponding climatic and anthropogenic drivers (or synergies among them) to test how different forests at different elevations respond to external forcings. This can be useful to evaluate the hypothesis of general Pyrenean deforestation during the Middle Ages leading to present-day landscapes and to improve the background for forest conservation. The study uses the palynological analysis of lake sediments, historical documents and paleoecological reconstructions based on pollen-independent proxies. The two sites studied showed different forest trajectories. The Montcortès area was subjected to intense human pressure during regional deforestation up to a maximum of ca. 1000 CE. Further forest recovery took place until the end of the Middle Ages due to a change in forest management, including the abandonment of slash-and-burn practices. Climatic shifts indirectly influenced forest trends by regulating human migrations and the resulting shifts in the type and intensity of forest exploitation. The highland Sant Maurici forests exhibited a remarkably long-standing constancy and an exceptional resilience to climatic shifts, which were unable to affect forest extension and composition, and to local human pressure, from which they rapidly recovered. The Montcortès and Sant Maurici records did not follow the rule of an irreversible forest clearing during the Middle Ages leading to present-day landscapes. The present Montcortès landscape was shaped after a Medieval forest recovery, new Modern-Age deforestation and further forest recovery during the last centuries. The Sant Maurici forests remained apparently untouched since the Bronze Age and were never cleared during the Middle Ages. The relevance of these findings for forest conservation is briefly addressed, and the need for the development of more high-resolution studies on Pyrenean forest dynamics is highlighted. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Long Term Dynamics of Conifer Forests)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-1
Back to TopTop