Dear Colleagues,

Global competition and societal change are eliciting incremental changes in forest management practices throughout temperate and boreal forest regions. Forest management objectives and associated silvicultural inputs are increasingly focused on enhancing end-product quality while providing a wider array of ecosystem services and maintaining or increasing volumetric fibre yields. Realizing this aspirational trivariate goal is partially dependent of the provision of enhanced in-forest operational intelligence and associated decision-making capacities in relation to the production and management of wood quality outcomes. Innovative research efforts continue to make consequential gains in addressing these issues via the development of wood quality and fibre attribute prediction models, in-forest non-destructive methods for estimating end-product potential, and crop planning decision-support systems and associated software analogues for use in operational forest management.

The journal Forests (mdpi), is embarking on an effort to document and advance these innovations throughout the forest science and management communities. Specifically, the upcoming Special Issue, entitled “Managing for Wood Quality: Analytics, Operational Tools and Applied Solutions”, will attempt to benchmark the state-of-knowledge and highlight research efforts in this rapidly evolving area. Contributions that aim to (1) quantify or model conceptual or empirical linkages between external tree morphology (e.g., crown structure) or internal fibre attributes (e.g., wood density, microfibial angle or modulus of elasticity) and end-product potential, (2) advance in-forest non-destructive methodologies for use in estimating internal wood quality attributes (e.g., acoustics), or (3) develop and (or) demonstrate crop planning decision-support analogues for use in managing wood quality outcomes (e.g., density management models), would all be within the scope of this Special Issue. Furthermore, contributions that attempt to incorporate the consequences of climate change on wood quality determinates or management decision-making would be most welcomed.

If applicable, please consider contributing to this effort and note contributions should be submitted by March 31st, 2021. Complete submission guidelines are available on the Forests' web-site: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/special_issues/Wood_Quality_Tools_Apply.

Best Regards,

Peter Newton (peter.newton@canada.ca)

CC. Jason Cao (jason.cao@mdpi.com)