About this Research Topic

Background

Climate change and air pollution affect forest ecosystems in many different ways. Drought periods strongly reduce tree growth and increase tree mortality in Europe and elsewhere. At the same time, elevated air pollution affects forests from the leaf to ecosystem level. Although societies’ expectations and understanding of forests are increasing and forests have become focal points for local, national and global interests, the provision of ecosystem services such as timber production, water purification, and carbon sequestration is more and more endangered. To address the impact of global change on forest ecosystems and their resilience, long-term data series are indispensable to evaluate status, trends and processes in forest ecosystems.

We aim to highlight the value of the extensive long-term data series on forest attributes and processes such as tree health, growth, phenology, biodiversity, nutritional status of soil, foliage and litter fall, eddy flux, deposition, concentration and uptake of air pollutants, climate and meteorology, from networks such as ICP Forests (and sister ICPs under the UN ECE Air Convention), and ICOS. We welcome contributions of novel modeling and remote sensing approaches and integrated assessments of long-term trends, from local to continental, hemispherical and global scales, to provide state of the art research on air pollution and climate effects on forests and related ecosystem services.

Contributions should be related to the above scope and goal. Emphasis should be put on long-term forest monitoring series, leading to a better understanding of climate change and air pollution effects on European forest ecosystems. In terms of contributions, research papers, opinion papers as well as data papers on mechanistic observational studies (short- and long-term), and experimental manipulative studies (either under controlled facilities and in the field) are welcome, among others. Manuscripts addressing novel remote sensing approaches as well as fusion of long-term data series with models are fully within the scope of the special issue. Contributions from the UNECE International Cooperative Programmes (ICPs) but also from ICOS, eLTER, Drought-Net, International Tree Mortality Network and national/regional networks (e.g. TreeNet, NFIs) are welcome. The collection of selected contributions will be summarized and integrated in a review paper, led by the guest editors.

Keywords: Long-Term Monitoring, Forests, Air Pollution, Climate Change, Forest Ecosystems

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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