Natural forest expansion is occurring across many regions due to the combined effect of climatic and land-use changes. At the same time, biodiversity is experiencing a decline whose control requires new tools enabling global monitoring.
Natural forest expansion is constrained by multiple factors acting at different spatial and temporal scales. Broad-scale latitudinal and elevational gradients of primary vegetation successions are mostly attributed to global warming, whereas the abandonment of agricultural activities is one of the most important social-economic facilitators of local secondary successions. The interaction between climatic and human-related drivers make the analysis of forest expansion particularly multifaceted and complex. Although many local studies on this topic exist, most of the analyses have either a short temporal extent or a limited spatial scale. Historical geographical data such as vegetation, cadastral, landscape planning maps, and aerial photographs are geographical datasets that have been used globally to quantify changes and develop forecasting models. Nevertheless, standardization and homogenization are required. Therefore, in this session, we aim to bring together experts approaching the topic from different perspectives and focusing on various biomes worldwide. Particularly, we seek for spatially-explicit diachronic approaches—combining modern remote sensing with historical cartography and aerial photos, permanent plots, ecological modeling, and socioeconomic analysis— to track where, why and with what consequences forests expand.