New special issue: Impacts of natural disturbances on forest ecosystems under climate change: large-scale analysis and modelling

We are launching the special issue “Impacts of natural disturbances on forest ecosystems under climate change: large-scale analysis and modelling”

Forest ecosystems play a key role in ensuring Earth’s climate stability by storing large amounts of carbon in their biomass and soils. But forests also have to cope with climate change effects, such as the increasing frequency and severity of natural extreme climate events such as drought, windstorms, late frost, wildfires, and pests, which represent major disturbances that may lead to a rapid degradation or loss of forest carbon sinks. However, our understanding of disturbance effects on forest carbon cycling remains incomplete. In particular, physiological processes leading to a reduction of carbon sequestration in disturbed forests are not well understood. The mechanisms and feedback effects of large scale disturbances can be elucidated using different but complementary methodologies such as remote sensing, field experiments, and process-based simulation modelling, with the aim to identify, quantify and forecast future forest dynamics and responses of carbon stocks and fluxes to natural disturbances. This special issue has the ambition to contribute to a better understanding and quantification of disturbance effects on forest ecosystem processes such as carbon assimilation, forest regeneration and biodiversity at different spatial scales. These information would be crucial to design and support the best management strategies in order to increase the resilience of forest ecosystems and thus of society to an increasingly disturbed world based on the ongoing climate change.

Our Guest Editors are Dr. Alessio Collalti, Dr. Angelo Nolè and Dr. Giorgio Vacchiano

Dr Alessio Collalti has a Master Science Degree in Natural Sciences and a Ph.D. in Forest Ecology. His principal background concerns Forest Ecology, Carbon Cycle, Forest and Vegetation modelling, particularly with regard to vegetation numerical modelling and forests response under natural and anthropogenic stress, including climate change. He has been working at the University of Tuscia (Viterbo, Italy), and at the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change, where he developed the 3D-CMCC (Three Dimensional-Coupled Model Carbon Cycle) Forest Ecosystem Model (https://www.3d-cmcc-fem.com/). He is currently a researcher at the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and he is the lead of the Forest Modelling working group at the Italian Society for Silviculture and Forest Ecology (SISEF).

Dr Angelo Nolè is a researcher at the University of Basilicata (Potenza, Italy). He has a Master Degree in Forest Sciences and a Ph.D. in Crop systems, forestry and environmental sciences. His research activities have been focused mainly on the functional modelling of forest ecosystems growth and carbon sequestration under climate change scenario, remote sensing and multi-temporal based analysis of the impacts of climate extreme events and disturbances on forest ecosystems, and the analysis of the ecosystem vulnerability and land degradation processes.

Dr. Giorgio Vacchiano is a researcher in forest management and planning at University of Milan, Italy. He has a MS and PhD in forestry at University of Turin, Italy. He has worked at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission as a forest modeler for two years. His research focuses on interactions between climate change and forest ecosystem services, using an ensemble of fieldwork, remote sensing approaches and simulation models. He was listed among 11 best emerging scientists globally by Nature Index 2018. He is also the coordinator of the working group on Forest communication at the Italian Society for Silviculture and Forest Ecology (SISEF).

Deadline for online manuscript submission: September 2020. Earlier papers will not have to wait for others and will be published directly online after final acceptation.

Authors must follow the instructions for authors available on Springer website and may use the templates available for the Title page and the Research article. Upon submission in Editorial Manager, authors must select “Disturbances under climate change” as Article type to assign their manuscripts to the special issue.

We are looking forward to receiving your manuscript and ready to answer any questions sent to annforsci@inra.fr.