Changes in forest structural diversity may affect many ecological functions and services. It encompasses attributes such as stand structure, composition, and canopy complexity, and its metrics include variation in tree heights and sizes, leaf density and clumping, canopy cover and arrangement, and heterogeneity and complexity. These metrics can be derived from forest inventories, modeling, and proximal (UAVs, terrestrial laser scanning), airborne (aerial lidar), and satellite (e.g., ICESat-2, GEDI, NISAR) remote sensing.

We encourage contributions that (1) discuss insights, views, and measures of structural diversity; (2) connect structural diversity to ecological processes (e.g., productivity, land-atmosphere exchange, biogeochemical cycling, disturbance); (3) explore relative importance of structural diversity and other biodiversity measures in determining ecosystem functions or services; (4) examine how global change and management shape structural diversity; (5) scale up structural diversity from plot and local scales to regional/continental/global scales; (6) link changes in structure over time to changes in ecosystem functioning.

• GC - Global Environmental Change