Dear Colleagues,

Forests provide vital ecosystem services crucial to human well-being and sustainable development, and have an important role to play in achieving the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.

Climate change causes changes in forests, their ecological functions, and ecosystem services. It is a major challenge for societies and environments, and forests have been integral to this challenge. Many of these changes will negatively impact people, plants, animals, and micro-organisms that depend on forests.

Forests play an important role in the global carbon cycle, and tropical deforestation and forest degradation are significant contributors to global emissions. Forests capture and store carbon dioxide in living biomass and help to store carbon in soils.

In addition, forests can help people and environments become less vulnerable to climate change by providing protection from floods and storms; providing food, materials, or alternative income after crop failures; and improving water quality and—in some cases—yield for downstream users.

Climate change is also expected to reinforce the current threats to forests and their ecosystem services by increasing the frequency and intensity of fires, pests and diseases, extreme events (flooding and storms), changing precipitation regimes, and the stricter link with air pollution.

We encourage the submission of studies from all fields, including experimental studies, monitoring observations, and modeling approaches to contribute to this Special Issue in order to promote knowledge for the identification of spatial and temporal behaviors in forest responses to climate change and air pollution.

Papers selected for this Special Issue will be subject to a rigorous peer-review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications

Dr. Alessandra De Marco
Guest Editor

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