Tracking Forest Disturbance in Northeast China’s Cold-Temperate Forests Using a Temporal Sequence of Landsat Data

Cold-temperate forests (CTFs) are not only an important source of wood but also provide significant carbon storage in China. However, under the increasing pressure of human activities and climate change, CTFs are experiencing severe disturbances, such as logging, fires, and pest infestations, leading to evident degradation trends. Though these disturbances impact both regional and global carbon budgets and their assessments, the disturbance patterns in CTFs in northern China remain poorly understood. In this paper, the Genhe forest area, which is a typical CTF region located in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Northeast China (with an area of about 2.001 × 104 km2), was selected as the study area. Based on Landsat historical archived data on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform, we used the continuous change detection and classification (CCDC) algorithm and considered seasonal features to detect forest disturbances over nearly 30 years. First, we created six inter-annual time series seasonal vegetation index datasets to map forest coverage using the maximum between-class variance algorithm (OTSU). Second, we used the CCDC algorithm to extract disturbance information. Finally, by using the ECMWF climate reanalysis dataset, MODIS C6, the snow phenology dataset, and forestry department records, we evaluated how disturbances relate to climate and human activities. The results showed that the disturbance map generated using summer (June–August) imagery and the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) had the highest overall accuracy (88%). Forests have been disturbed to the extent of 12.65% (2137.31 km2) over the last 30 years, and the disturbed area generally showed a trend toward reduction, especially after commercial logging activities were banned in 2015. However, there was an unusual increase in the number of disturbed areas in 2002 and 2003 due to large fires. The monitoring of potential widespread forest disturbance due to extreme drought and fire events in the context of climate change should be strengthened in the future, and preventive and salvage measures should be taken in a timely manner. Our results demonstrate that CTF disturbance can be robustly mapped by using the CCDC algorithm based on Landsat time series seasonal imagery in areas with complex meteorological conditions and spatial heterogeneity, which is essential for understanding forest change processes.