Evaluating the consistency of forest disturbance datasets in continental USA

Abstract. Forests play a crucial role in the Earth System, providing essential ecosystem services and sustaining biological diversity. However, forest ecosystems are increasingly impacted by disturbances, which are often integral to their dynamics but have been exacerbated by climate change. Despite the growing concern, there is currently a lack of globally consistent and temporally continuous data on forest disturbances to characterize changes in disturbance regimes. This gap hinders our ability to accurately assess and respond to these changes.

In this study, we focus on the continental United States and compare four datasets on forest disturbances to evaluate their consistency and reliability regarding their spatial and temporal characteristics and driven agents, when available. Our analysis reveals a moderate agreement across the datasets, with inventory-based comparisons demonstrating the highest level of consistency. In contrast, comparisons involving remote sensing data show lower alignment and a delayed detection of disturbances by satellite observations compared to ground-based inventories. Additionally, discrepancies were observed in the identification of disturbance agents in overlapping areas. Our findings underscore the importance of careful data quality assessment and consideration of their inherent uncertainty when utilizing them for further applications. This study highlights the need for improved data integration and accuracy to advance the understanding of forest disturbances.