Resilience of forest composition, configuration, and structure following wildfire and harvest

Forests provide essential ecosystem services, including carbon storage, water regulation, and habitat provision. Due to these important functions, forests are consequently subject to extensive monitoring and sustainable management efforts, which require consistent reporting across management units and jurisdictions to ultimately balance conservation and resource use. Stand-replacing disturbances, such as harvesting and wildfire, significantly alter forest landscapes by removing vegetation and reshaping their spatial and structural patterns. Following disturbance, forest development can be characterized using indicators that capture different facets of its composition (extent), configuration (spatial pattern and fragmentation), and structure (biomass and canopy properties). Using annual, wall-to-wall, satellite-derived data from 1984 to 2022, we tracked the post-disturbance dynamics of forest composition, configuration, and structure across Canada’s forested ecosystems. Our results showed that during our nearly four-decade study period, forests generally returned to pre-disturbance conditions largely resembling baseline conditions. Forest composition and configuration returned more rapidly to baseline, while structural metrics, such as aboveground biomass and canopy cover density, recovered more slowly, with rates strongly influenced by disturbance type and geographic location. Thirty years after harvesting, managed forests reached 95% of baseline aboveground biomass, whereas burned areas reached 42% of baseline. These contrasting outcomes reflect the diversity of growing conditions across Canada’s forests, where variability in productivity, seasonality, and other factors influence the time required for forest vertical structural development. In managed forests, post-harvest conditions closely matched pre-disturbance composition and structure, and configuration metrics showed no significant differences after three decades. In contrast, wildfire-dominated northern forests did not consistently reach baseline levels within the period covered but were trending toward them by the end of our analysis period. We provide a spatially explicit assessment of post-disturbance forest dynamics considering multiple metrics across Canada using multi-decadal, satellite-based observations and a landscape-scale analysis framework. This approach supports sustainability assessments and provides a basis for multifaceted monitoring of forest conditions in response to natural and anthropogenic disturbances. • Forest composition, configuration, and structure were assessed after fire and harvest. • Satellite-based annual wall-to-wall data were analyzed across Canada from 1984 to 2022. • Composition and configuration returned more rapidly than structural attributes. • Structural recovery was strongly influenced by disturbance type and location. • Managed post-harvest forests closely resemble pre-disturbance baseline conditions.