Large loss and rapid recovery of vegetation cover and aboveground biomass over forest areas in Australia during 2019-2020

Australia experienced multi-year drought and record high temperatures, and massive forest fires occurred across the southeast in 2019 and early 2020. In the fire-affected forest areas, understory and often tree canopies were burned, and in-situ observations in late 2020 reported rapid vegetation recovery, including grasses, shrubs, and tree canopies from burned-but-not-dead eucalyptus trees. Considering the strong fire resilience and resistance of eucalyptus trees and above-average rainfall in 2020, we assessed how much and how quickly vegetation structure and biomass changed from loss to post-fire and drought recovery in 2020 for all forest areas in Australia. Here, we analyzed space-borne optical, thermal, and microwave images to assess changes in the structure and function of vegetation using four vegetation indices (VIs), leaf area index (LAI), solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), gross primary production (GPP), and aboveground biomass (AGB). We found that all eight variables show large losses in 2019, driven by fires and climate (drought and high temperature), but large gains in 2020, resulting from the high resilience of most trees to fire and rapid growth of understory vegetation under wet condition in 2020. In 2019, the forest area has an AGB loss of 0.20 Pg C, which is similar to 15% of the pre-fire AGB. Attribution analyses showed that both fire and climate (prior and co-occurring severe drought and record high temperatures) are responsible for the AGB loss in 2019, approximately 0.09 Pg C (fire) and 0.11 Pg C (climate), respectively. In 2020, the forest area has a total AGB gain of 0.26 Pg C, composed of 0.22 Pg C from fire-affected forest area and 0.04 Pg C from fire-unaffected forest area. Fire-adapted Eucalyptus forests and above-average annual precipitation in 2020 brought by a moderate La Nina drove the recovery of vegetation cover, productivity, and AGB. The results from this study shows the potential of multiple sensors for monitoring and assessing the impacts of fire and climate on the forest areas in Australia and their post-fire recovery.

Automated summary

Australia experienced severe drought, high temperatures, and massive forest fires in 2019 and early 2020. However, the eucalyptus trees showed strong fire resilience, and the understory vegetation quickly recovered in 2020. Using multiple sensors, this study analyzed the impacts of fire and climate on forest areas in Australia and found that the forests experienced significant losses in 2019 but showed large gains in 2020 due to the high resilience of trees and favorable conditions. The results highlight the potential of monitoring and assessing post-fire recovery using remote sensing.