Dear colleagues, The open access journal _Forests (IF 1.956)_ (ISSN 1999-4907) is currently running a special issue entitled " DIEBACK ON DROUGHT-PRONE FOREST ECOSYSTEMS ". As we are acting as guest editors for this issue, we would like to welcome contributions from various disciplines. We kindly invite you to consider submitting your full paper to this special issue.
Special Issue Website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/special_issues/Dieback_Drought Submission Deadline: 14 JULY 2019 Authors are invited to submit papers related to the following topics: The world is getting warmer rapidly, and mortality events rose over the past 30 years in forests ecosystems trough GROWTH DECLINE, LOSS OF VIGOUR and, in many cases, death, revealing the high VULNERABILITY OF MANY FORESTS IN ALL BIOMES. These episodes can have the potential to rapidly alter ecosystem services, with important implications on the carbon-water balance, nutrient cycling or population and community dynamics. Besides the presence of inciting (e.g. heat and drought events) and contributing factors (e.g. opportunistic biotic agents), predisposition of particular species, populations or individuals of a given species is considered as central for understanding why some organisms survive while others succumb to climatic stress. There is also a gap of knowledge about the role of intraspecific trait variability, which might be caused either by genetic or local environmental differences, on determining key mechanisms leading mortality events such as the carbon starvation-hydraulic failure model for plants. This Special Issue of Forests calls to join efforts TO IMPROVE OUR UNDERSTANDING ON HOW ECOSYSTEMS RESPOND TO CHANGES IN CLIMATE AND WHICH FUNCTIONAL OR STRUCTURAL TRAITS MAKE SOME SPECIES MORE PRONE TO DIEBACK AND MORTALITY EPISODES. We propose multidisciplinary contributions using varied disciplines such as ecophysiology, functional ecology, forest pathology, dendroecology, remote sensing and modelling. Authors should address ecological and management aspects, including mitigation and adaptation to the environmental risks globally faced by forests. Contributions including experimental, observational as well as theoretical studies are welcome for any biomes or scale. KEYWORDS: _Forest dieback, Extreme Climatic Events, Disturbances, Climate warming, Climatic Risks, Forests Vulnerability, Forest Pathogens, Insect Outbreaks, Forest Fires, Regeneration, Forest Management, Environmental Stress, Forest Growth, Tree physiology, Climate Warming, Dendroecology,_ At the moment, about 4-5 papers have already signed up for this special issue, and several other authors have expressed their interest. If you are interested in our special issue, please feel free to contact us, or submit your manuscripts at http://susy.mdpi.com/user/register Also, authors are encouraged to send a short abstract or tentative title to the Editorial Office in advance (fore...@mdpi.com) and please keep us posted. _Forests_ is fully open access. Open access (unlimited and free access by readers) increases publicity and promotes more frequent citations, as indicated by several studies. Open access is supported by the authors' fees and their institutes. Feel free to contact us of the Editorial Office at: fore...@mdpi.com if you would have any questions. We look forward to hearing from you. Kind regards, Raúl Sánchez-Salguero Luis Matias J. Julio Camarero _Guest Editors_ -- ********************************* Dr. Raúl Sánchez-Salguero Dpto. Sistemas Físicos, Químicos y Naturales Universidad Pablo de Olavide Ctra.Utrera Km 1, 41013 Ed. 22, 4ª pl., Desp. 1c Sevilla, SPAIN Phone: +34 954349535 Fax: +34 954977305 Email: rsanc...@upo.es **********************************
