Centennial recovery of recent human-disturbed forests

Abstract

International commitments are challenging countries to restore their degraded lands, particularly forests. These commitments require global assessments of recovery timescales and trajectories of different forest attributes to inform restoration strategies. We use a meta-chronosequence approach including 125 forest chronosequences to reconstruct past (c. 300 years), and model future recovery trajectories of forests recovering from agriculture and logging impacts. We found recovering forests significantly differed from undisturbed ones after 150 years and projected that difference to remain for up to 218 (38-745) or 494 (92-2,039) years for ecosystem attributes like nitrogen stocks or species similarity, respectively. These conservative estimates, however, do not capture the complexity of forest ecosystems. A centennial recovery of forests requires strategic, unprecedented planning to deliver a restored world.