Forest Management Practices To Preserve Soil’s Ecological Multifunctionality

Forests constitute the largest carbon pool in terrestrial ecosystems. As a vital component of forest ecosystems, forest soils are not only central to global carbon cycling but also underpin multiple critical ecosystem functions, including nutrient retention, hydrological regulation, and biodiversity conservation.In the context of global climate change and land-use change (urbanization and forest degradation), the carbon sink stability and the capacity of soils to simultaneously provide multiple ecological functions (such as carbon storage, water storage, nutrient cycling, microbial biodiversity source,) in forests are seriously threatened. However, critical knowledge gaps remain in understanding how forest structure, tree species composition, and soil microbial communities interact to regulate soil carbon sequestration and multifunctionality, under environmental change, which limits effective forest management. In fact, most management strategies are built on historical patterns of climate, disturbance, and species performance. Changes in temperature, precipitation regimes, and the frequency of extreme events cause the increase of patterns variability and unpredictability, (e.g., droughts, heatwaves, storms, fires), making harder to plan management practices. Decisions based on the past become less reliable or even counterproductive.Accordingly, this Research Topic aims to advance the mechanistic understanding of the relationships between forest structure, tree diversity, soil microorganisms, and soil carbon sequestration and multifunctionality in forest ecosystems, under climate and land-use change. We welcome manuscripts on themes that include, but are not limited to:• The influence of forest structure and tree diversity on soil multifunctionality.• Biotic and abiotic regulatory mechanisms of soil organic carbon stability in forest ecosystems.• Urban and peri-urban forest soil management.• The coupling mechanism of plant–microbe–soil functions.• Soil function restoration of degraded forests under climate and land-use change. Topic editors: Yanbo Yang, Chenhui Wei, Qiong Wang, Xiting Zhang Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/80322/forest-management-practices-to-preserve-soils-ecological-multifunctionality