Forest disturbances from human and natural have been increasing globally, requiring robust monitoring of disturbance change. Remote sensing is one of the major tools for understanding disturbance change, but uptake by remote sensing products from policy is often hampered by ambiguity on what is called a disturbance by different communities. I here propose a framework that bridges between the technical realm of remote sensing and policy by outlining a clear definition of disturbance that distinguishes three hierarchical levels of information that can be derived from remote sensing.