Forest Carbon Management under Climate Change: Contributions, Controversies, and Pathways toward Sustainable Carbon Sink Forestry

Forests play a central role in regulating the global carbon cycle and are widely recognized as a major nature-based solution to climate change. Through carbon sequestration, storage, and long-term ecosystem regulation, forests contribute to climate mitigation while supporting biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being. In response to global carbon neutrality goals, afforestation, reforestation, forest restoration, sustainable forest management, and carbon-oriented landscape planning have become increasingly important components of climate policies.Despite this potential, the rapid expansion of carbon sink forestry has raised scientific, ecological, and socio-economic concerns. Forest carbon accumulation varies among ecosystems, and is influenced by climate conditions, disturbance regimes, management practices, and temporal scales. Issues related to carbon permanence, additionality, accounting uncertainties, and unintended ecological consequences challenge the assumption that increasing forest carbon stocks alone can ensure sustainable climate mitigation.Under accelerating climate change, forest carbon management needs to move beyond carbon-focused approaches. Effective strategies should simultaneously consider carbon sequestration capacity, climate sensitivity, disturbance risks, ecosystem resilience, biodiversity conservation, water and soil functions, and socio-economic sustainability. Such an integrated perspective is essential for determining where, when, and how forest-based mitigation can deliver long-term climate benefits.This Research Topic aims to advance understanding of the contributions, limitations, controversies, and future pathways of forest carbon management under climate change. By integrating ecological science, forest management, remote sensing, carbon accounting, and governance, this collection will identify evidence-based approaches for developing resilient, multifunctional, and sustainable carbon sink forestry across diverse ecosystems and geographic regions.We invite original research, review articles, and case studies addressing the following themes:1. Forest carbon dynamics under climate changeInvestigating the mechanisms that control forest carbon sequestration, storage, and ecosystem carbon balance, with particular attention to climate sensitivity, carbon allocation, disturbance effects, temporal dynamics, and the long-term stability of forest carbon sinks.2. Monitoring, reporting, and verification of forest carbon sinksAdvancing field inventories, remote sensing, artificial intelligence, ecosystem modeling, and multi-source data integration to improve the monitoring, quantification, verification, and uncertainty assessment of forest carbon sinks across spatial and temporal scales.3. Carbon sink forestry practices and management effectivenessEvaluating afforestation, reforestation, forest restoration, and sustainable forest management in terms of carbon benefits, additionality, permanence, long-term effectiveness, management challenges, and experiences from large-scale implementation.4. Synergies and trade-offs between carbon sequestration and ecosystem functionsAssessing how carbon-focused forest management interacts with biodiversity conservation, water availability, soil processes, ecosystem services, and landscape resilience, and developing multifunctional management strategies that balance carbon objectives with broader ecological goals.5. Climate risks, disturbances, and resilience of forest carbon sinksExamining how drought, heatwaves, wildfires, pests, storms, and other disturbances influence the stability, recovery, and permanence of carbon sinks, and identifying adaptive strategies that enhance the resistance and resilience of forest ecosystems under future climate change.6. Governance, policy, markets, and socio-economic dimensionsInvestigating carbon credits, climate policies, institutional arrangements, stakeholder participation, community outcomes, equity, and governance mechanisms that influence the credibility, implementation, and social sustainability of forest carbon management.7. Future pathways toward sustainable carbon sink forestryExploring climate-smart forestry, adaptive management, restoration ecology, integrated landscape planning, and other innovative approaches that can transform forest carbon management from carbon-focused interventions toward resilient, multifunctional, and sustainable forest landscapes. Topic editors: Jinyan Zhan, Huijie Li, TingYu XU Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/87344/forest-carbon-management-under-climate-change-contributions-controversies-and-pathways-toward-sustainable-carbon-sink-forestry