Bridging Data and Theory for Monitoring Resilience Changes in Tropical Forests

Given ongoing climate and land use change, the resilience of tropical forests is crucial for maintaining ecosystem services and for preventing potential forest loss and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Recent studies have attempted to quantify tropical forest resilience changes using satellite vegetation products and resilience metrics. However, it has not been assessed to what extent the data satisfies the theoretical assumptions of the metrics. Here, we propose a framework to determine the most reliable combination of vegetation data and metrics to monitor resilience from space. We apply our framework to select the best combinations from 16 vegetation products and nine resilience metrics. Based on these, we show that although tropical forests in South America, Africa, and Asia have lost resilience in recent decades, this loss is less widespread than previously thought. Our robust assessment of resilience changes in tropical forests has important implications for targeted actions to prevent forest loss.