Monitoring the resilience of European forests from space and its relation to tree functional diversity

The ecological resilience of forests quantifies their capacity to respond to and recover from disturbances, an increasingly important property in an era of climate extremes and anthropogenic pressures. Whilst there are different metrics and studies that relate forest resilience to factors such as climate, the link between biodiversity and resilience in forests is not well understood. This study aims to quantify the importance of metrics of tree functional diversity in the context of forest resilience, via a number of resilience indicators. These indicators include the temporal autocorrelation of MODIS kNDVI at high spatial and temporal resolution, after accounting for short-term fluctuations in climate. The spatial scale dependence of the relationship between resilience and biodiversity is also explored and the study has implications for forest management globally.