Abstract:Forest disturbance is a major driver of forest change. Forest resilience reflects the forest's the adaptability of forests to disturbance events. Exploring the variabilities in forest resilience is key to improving forest resilience, protecting forest ecosystems, and achieving sustainable forest development. This study evaluated the forest resilience to disturbance events in the Daxinganling region from 2003 to 2022 based on the time series of canopy density, using forest inventory data from more than 1,000 sample plots, in combination with continuous annual vegetation indices extracted from remote sensing images of Landsat satellite 5/7/8. Then the random forest model was used to analyze the effects of stand characteristics (average height, average breast diameter, canopy density), terrain factors (altitude, slope degree, aspect and position) and disturbance event characteristics (disaster type and disaster level) on forest resilience. (1) The bands of remote sensing images combined with vegetation indices could estimate stand closure accurately, with the R2 of the ten-fold cross-test is as high as 0.88. It is feasible to evaluate the disturbance impact and resilience of forests based on canopy density. (2) Forest disturbance caused a decrease in crown density, and only less than half of the disturbed plots recovered after the disturbance. The impacts of disturbance and forest resilience varied with the disturbance types. Fires disturbance had the highest impact on forest, followed by pests, while forests had the lowest resilience to fires. It is necessary to enforce the prevention of fire and pest disturbances in the Daxinganling. The number of plots disturbed by drought was the highest among all disturbance types in the entire region, and the forest resilience to drought was in the middle with the resilience indexes of about 1. (3) The disturbance impact was the most important driver of forest resilience, followed by altitude and canopy density. Other topographic factors such as slope aspect, position and degree were less important for forest resilience. Forest resilience decreased with increasing disturbance impacts. The forest resilience was less than 1 when the disturbance impact exceeded 70%, indicating that the forest canopy density failed to recover to the pre-disturbance level after the disturbances. There was an initial increase, followed by a precipitous decrease in forest resilience with the increase of canopy density. Forest resilience also decreased with increasing altitude. The results suggested that reducing the impact degree of forest disturbance, especially for high-canopy-density forests at high altitudes is an effective measure to protect the forests in Daxinganling. [Conclusion] Our research results on forest resilience in Daxinganling are of great significance for local forest management and protection against the backdrop of increasingly frequent disturbance events.