The amount of undisturbed forest in proximity of severe disturbance patches enhances their recovery in temperate Europe

Context: Forest recovery following disturbances is essential for maintaining ecosystem services, especially after large-scale events where regeneration is limited by seed availability. Understanding how environmental and biotic factors influence regeneration across spatial scales is fundamental for landscape-scale management, yet the importance and spatial extent of landscape-scale effects on local recovery remains uncertain. Objectives: We aimed to assess the relative influence of recovery drivers at plot, patch, and landscape scales on post-disturbance forest regeneration. Specifically, we investigated how local topography, disturbance characteristics, and the spatial arrangement of undisturbed forests affect tree regeneration after severe disturbances, namely windthrows, fires, and bark beetle outbreaks. Methods: Our study combines a comprehensive ground-based dataset of post-disturbance regeneration from temperate European forests with Landsat-derived maps of forest cover. We applied a distance-weighted regression approach to evaluate the effect of landscape (i.e., undisturbed forest in proximity of disturbance patches) on recovery, improving upon traditional buffer-based approaches. Results: We found that ¾ of the landscape influence on forest regeneration occurred within 112 m from plot centers, with undisturbed forests nearby positively enhancing regeneration, likely due to increased seed availability. In contrast, plot-level factors, namely disturbance severity and elevation, negatively impacted regeneration, suggesting that regeneration success can be hindered by severe disturbances reducing living biological legacies, as well as harsher local climatic conditions, associated with higher elevations. Conclusions: Our findings underline the importance of integrating landscape-scale management with targeted local interventions to promote post-disturbance forest recovery. Management strategies should consider spatially explicit planning to enhance seed source availability and mitigate severe disturbance impacts.