Long-term recovery of canopy 3D structural diversity following wildfires in the world’s largest temperate woodland

Wildfires play a major role in shaping the structure and dynamics of many woody ecosystems, with growing concerns that their frequency and intensity are increasing with climate change. However, we lack an understanding of how canopy structure recovers after wildfires, which limits our ability to forecast the long-term impacts of these disturbances on key ecosystem functions such as carbon storage and biodiversity. Using airborne laser scanning data acquired across a 450 year chronosequence of time since fire, we modelled the recovery trajectory of canopy 3D structural diversity across the largest temperate woodland on Earth in Western Australia. We found that canopy height, cover and heterogeneity recovered at varying rates and followed distinct trajectories. Canopies became taller, denser and more vertically homogeneous during the initial 100–150 years following fire. Subsequently, height growth plateaued while canopy cover continuously decreased for several centuries, leading to open and spatially heterogeneous structures in old-growth woodlands. The highly predictable nature of these structural recovery trajectories following wildfires allowed us to develop robust models for mapping stand age based on structural features. Our study paves the way for leveraging emerging remote sensing technologies to track ecosystem recovery from disturbance, thereby guiding management and restoration interventions at scale.