Storm and fire disturbances in Europe: Distribution and trends

Abiotic forest disturbances are an important driver of ecosystem dynamics. In Europe, storms and fires have been identified as the most important abiotic disturbances in the recent past. Yet, how strongly these agents drive local disturbance regimes compared to other agents (e.g., biotic, human) remains unresolved. Furthermore, whether storms and fires are responsible for the observed increase in forest disturbances in Europe is debated. Here, we provide quantitative evidence for the prevalence of storm and fire disturbances in Europe 1986–2016. For 27 million disturbance patches mapped from satellite data, we determined whether they were caused by storm or fire, using a random forest classifier and a large reference dataset of true disturbance occurrences. We subsequently analyzed patterns of disturbance prevalence (i.e., the share of an agent on the overall area disturbed) in space and time. Storm- and fire-related disturbances each accounted for approximately 7% of all disturbances recorded in Europe in the period 1986–2016. Storm-related disturbances were most prevalent in western and central Europe, where they locally accounted for >50% of all disturbances, but we also identified storm-related disturbances in south-eastern and eastern Europe. Fire-related disturbances were a major disturbance agent in southern and south-eastern Europe, but fires also occurred in eastern and northern Europe. The prevalence and absolute area of storm-related disturbances increased over time, whereas no trend was detected for fire-related disturbances. Overall, we estimate an average of 127,716 (97,680–162,725) ha of storm-related disturbances per year and an average of 141,436 (107,353–181,022) ha of fire-related disturbances per year. We conclude that abiotic disturbances caused by storm and fire are important drivers of forest dynamics in Europe, but that their influence varies substantially by region. Our analysis further suggests that increasing storm-related disturbances are an important driver of Europe's changing forest disturbance regimes.