Severely disturbed forests in Central Europe retain robust recovery capacity but face resilience loss due to spatial homogenization

Abstract Context Following the hot and dry year of 2018, European forests underwent an unprecedented wave of disturbances. The subsequent recovery phase is indicative of ecosystem resilience and critical for long-term forest development; however, the landscape-scale manifestation of these processes remains poorly understood. Objectives Quantify forest disturbance and early recovery dynamics across a 9000-km 2 forested landscape (Central Europe, Czech Republic) following an extensive outbreak of spruce bark beetle and subsequent treatment by extensive salvage logging and replanting. Methods We integrated optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar remote sensing data with very high-resolution UAV imagery and derived vegetation height models to map disturbance impacts and post-disturbance recovery patterns from 2018 to 2024. Results Between 2018 and 2024, 30.8% of the initial forest area was disturbed. Within the disturbed areas, bare soil dominated, indicating a lack of understory in the pre-disturbance forest and the high intensity of removal of disturbance legacies. Temporary regeneration failures, i.e., transitions back to bare soil represented a significant part of recovery dynamics. The average transition time from bare soil to regrowth > 2 m was 5.2 years and the net annual recovery rate (i.e., recovery corrected for failure) was 5.9%. By 2024, 25% of disturbed area was covered by vegetation taller than 2 m. Conclusions Severely disturbed managed forests in Central Europe retain substantial recovery capacity, even under increasingly extreme climatic conditions. However, the predominance of non-vegetated landcover following disturbance may lead to structurally uniform forests with reduced resilience, suggesting the need for improved management practices.