Call for papers for Special Issue "Urbanization Effects on Carbon Pools: Spatial Complexity and Temporal Trajectories"

Dear Colleagues,

Land use activities contribute almost one-quarter of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Traditionally, understanding shifts in carbon stocks due to land-cover and land-use change have primarily focused on agriculture and forestry, but urban areas are increasingly recognized for their role in the carbon dynamics of land. These dynamics are complex, with both carbon hotspots and losses documented in cities.

Urbanization encompasses a wide array of land transformation processes, creating an intricate mosaic of land uses and land covers including residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation spaces, modified and designed greenspaces, and remnant native ecosystems. From local place-making to regional development, these land-use decisions have both cumulative and compounding effects on global carbon pools and net emissions, thus affecting the Earth system.

This special issue invites contributions exploring carbon consequences of urbanization, both land transformations of precursor systems and carbon shifts within those urban ecosystems. From a land systems science perspective, the land-climate interactions related to the consequences of land-use/land-cover change connected to urbanization processes on carbon pools are of interest.

The Special Issues encourages original full-length research contributions, reviews, case studies, methodological papers, and shorter communications from researchers and practitioners on topics such as, but not limited to:

• Carbon pool change due to urbanization of precursor systems
• Temporal trajectories of carbon stocks on urbanized land
• Spatial relationships and shifts of carbon pools across the urban mosaic
• Carbon pool implications of urban planning and development decisions (e.g., densification and extensification)
• Scaling in situ measurements to regional and national assessments of urban carbon pools
• Methods, tools, and analytical approaches for monitoring carbon dynamics in cities

In order to build a comprehensive knowledge base, contributions are sought that represent all geographies around the globe and current incarnations of urban areas, old and new— from small and medium cities to megacities and metropolitan areas.

Dr. Nancy Golubiewski
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.