Where forest may not return in the western United States
Climate-related changes to drought, fire, and insect outbreak regimes have raised concerns that western United States forests, once disturbed, may not return or reattain prior structure and composition. Many post-fire recruitment studies have documented absence or low densities of seedlings, supporting concerns that altered disturbance regimes may impair subsequent forest succession. We used existing temporal (2001 – 2016) land cover data with documented data quality in combination with a 2001 – 2019 NDVI time series to estimate an upper bound of 9,150 km2 of disturbed forest which may not return or reattain prior composition and structure. Using other attributes in the database, we demonstrated how additional information can be used in a professional judgement, relative risk framework to inform where to look and refine the estimate of the total area of impaired forest succession.