The Forest Hydrology section of Frontiers in Forests and Global Change is co-led by Specialty Chief Editors, Steven McNulty and Kevin McGuire and examines how these changing and combined stresses impact forest hydrologic sustainable development goals (SDGs) from local to global scale. A combination of field monitoring, experimentation, and forest hydrologic modeling are all equally important and are welcome contributions to Forest Hydrology.

Kevin McGuire

“I am excited that there is now an outlet to highlight advances in forest hydrologic research in a distinctive section of a journal,” says Kevin McGuire. “Research in forest hydrology goes back to the earliest investigations on forest management effects and has been fundamental across all of hydrology.  I’m pleased to help raise the visibility and impact of research addressing all aspects of forest and water interactions.”

Steven McNulty

Steven McNulty, co-chief editor of Forest Hydrology agrees. He became a forest ecologist because “ecology is a challenging area of natural science, requiring both a broad understanding of many disciplines and the ability to assemble those pieces to achieve a new understanding of forest hydrology. My research includes modeling and field experiments that focus on the trade-offs between forest productivity and water use across a range of environmental conditions and variabilities.”

For millennia, people have known that forests provide a clean, reliable source of water. But changes in climate, competing natural resource needs, and increasing water demand are straining the ability of some forests to supply enough water to meet the needs of communities and downstream ecosystems. Beyond changing water resource demands, the level, type, and combinations of forest stress are also changing — often in ways never before observed.

Historically high concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and record high air temperatures, changing patterns of ozone concentrations and sulfur and nitrogen deposition, along with extreme weather events are changing patterns of forest response and management norms. Water resource sustainability can be improved through a better understanding of how current and predicted future environmental and anthropogenic factors affect forest hydrologic processes and water availability.

Forest Hydrology is now open for high-quality article submissions and welcomes Research Topic proposals.

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