European Forest Disturbance Atlas: Annual Maps from 1985-2023

1985-2023 annual forest disturbance maps for 38 European countries derived from Landsat satellite data. The atlas includes layers for disturbance year, count, severity, and causal agent attribution. It was created by Alba Viana‐Soto at the Technical University of Munich and is available as GeoTIFF files.

Use Cases

• Analyzing temporal trends in forest disturbances based on the annual disturbance layers from 1985 to 2023.
• Mapping the spatial distribution of disturbance agents like fire, harvest, and wind/bark beetle based on the causal agent attribution layer.
• Assessing the ecological impact of disturbances based on the disturbance severity layer indicating spectral change.
• Monitoring forest recovery and land-use change based on the stack of annual disturbances and forest land use layer.

Strengths

• Covers a 39-year time series (1985-2023) for longitudinal analysis.
• Includes data for 38 European countries, providing broad spatial coverage.
• Offers multiple thematic layers (year, count, severity, agent) for multi-faceted analysis.
• Maps are regularly updated, with the most current version being 2.1.1.

Limitations

• Known issues include SLC-off artefacts and some false disturbances mapped north of 67°N in Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Technical University of Munich

Collection Method

Derived from Landsat satellite data.

Time Range

1985-2023

Freshness

The maps are stated to be updated regularly, with the latest version covering data until 2023.

Geography

38 European countries