Scope: The present Special Issue intends to publish in the same issue
(but is not limited to) a selection of papers submitted to the
scientific committee of the World Congress, with focus on those
related to the working group WG 4 - Forest management and modeling:
silviculture, tree management and planning.

The topics covered by this SI include: Silvo-pastoral systems are
highly complex as they share different trees, shrubs and herbaceous
strata in space and time. The existence of wild and domestic livestock
within the system attaches to this complexity. Silviculture that is
applied to each of these agro-silvo-pastoral systems includes
management techniques that must optimize several productions in time
and space which may compromise its sustainability and conservation.
These forest systems are managed to share direct productions of wood,
firewood, forages and other non-wood forest products as cork, acorn
and pine nuts, for example, but also cattle and game. Non direct
production as recreation, landscape or biodiversity should be included
too. This multiplicity of products and services leads to several
alternative management approaches each adapted to prioritize some of
the products and/or services.

In a context where forests are in a non-stationary state related to
forest expansion and climate change impact, and where the demand for
biomass is increasing, there is a lack of tools to elaborate forest
adaptation scenarios and designing sustainable forest management
pathways for the future. Management and planning of these
agro-silvo-pastoral systems are very complex and specific and require
effective and specific tools for its development, including modelling
of forest ecosystems dynamics and of the respective products and
services. These tools and strategies therefore have to define ways to
cope with both long-term trends and short-term hazards, induced by
climate change, and to maintain direct wood and non-wood forest
(products) and indirect production (services).

As a consequence, the aim of this working group will be to give a
comprehensive view of the whole agro-silvo-pastoral systems including
innovative and smart forest management models which are defined as a
combination of forest management practices at stand scale and forest
management systems at landscape and regional scales, integrating the
management of its different components and environmental aspects and
modelling its production and dynamics in the framework of a sustained
forest-based bio-economy.

Invitation: We are therefore inviting you to submit your paper to the
journal “Forest Systems”, within this Special Issue.

Schedule: The publication of the SI is tentatively scheduled for the
beginning of 2018. The deadline for submission of the manuscripts is
1st July 2017. Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed following standard
Forest Systems procedures.

Guest Editors:
Ana Cristina Gonçalves, ICAAM (Instituto de Ciências Agrárias e
Ambientais Mediterrânicas), Universidade de Évora, Portugal |
acag@uevora.pt

Isabel Cañelas, INIA (Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias), Spain

Margarida Tomé, Centro de Estudos Florestais, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal