Unveiling small-scale tropical forest loss and post-loss recovery in the Congo Basin

• Small-scale forest loss and post-loss recovery from 2001 to 2021 were quantified in the Congo Basin. • The tracking of small-scale forest loss and post-loss recovery was enhanced by yearly maximal rNBR. • 76.5% of forest loss was small-scale clearing and 93.6% occurred within 4 km of human settlements. • Gross forest loss was 24.54 ± 1.70 Mha in Congo Basin and only 13.21% showed high-quality recovery. • Near-natural recovery can deliver four times more high-quality recovery than current levels. Despite containing the world’s second-largest tropical forest, the nuances of forest dynamics in the Congo Basin remain relatively less studied compared to other major tropical regions. While emerging evidence highlights smallholder clearing in the Congo Basin, the dynamic change mechanism of small-scale forest loss (i.e., clearing size ≤ 1.8 ha) and post-disturbance recovery is still not well understood, yet critical for the biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration. Here, we presented a comprehensive quantification of forest loss and post-loss recovery in the Congo Basin by developing a new small-scale forest change product using all available Landsat and Sentinel-2 records from 2000 to 2021, improving upon previous products of global forest change (GFC) and JRC tropical moist forest (TMF) cover change. We detected extensive, small-scale, fragmented forest loss with an area of 24.54 ± 1.70 Mha and found that 76.5% of the total forest loss belonged to small-scale clearing and 93.6% occurred within 4 km of human settlements. Of the forest loss, only ∼13.21% subsequently experienced high-quality recovery, with greater proximity to human settlements associated with lower recovery. Protected areas decreased the forest loss rate, but the corresponding post-loss recovery was even less than that in non-protected areas, indicating that protected areas are only partially efficient and highlighting the vulnerability and exposure of the vast coverage of non-protected areas. Nevertheless, near-natural recovery of annual forest loss, defined as post-loss forest recovery without any further disturbances following the initial loss, holds the potential to achieve approximately four times greater high-quality canopy-level recovery magnitude (i.e., 50.9%) than the current levels of recovery, which underscores the importance of preventing additional disturbances after forest loss. This research provides essential evidence with which to guide the protection of the primary rainforest and reinforce policies to enhance post-loss recovery.