Submonthly Assessment of Temperate Forest Clear-Cuts in Mainland France

Remote sensing satellites allow large-scale and fast detections of forest loss. Operational forest loss detection systems have been mainly developed over tropical forests; however, it is increasingly important to have access to accurate and up-to-date information on temperate forests. In this article, we adapted a Sentinel-1-based near real-time tropical forest loss detection method, based on the radar change ratio, to detect French temperate forests clear-cuts. Using ancillary data, annual and submonthly clear-cuts were assessed for broadleaf and conifer forests, for various tree species, over public and private forests. Using 967 validation plots, the maps exhibited recall and precision of 80.9% and 99.4%, respectively. The clear-cuts area shows remarkable stability over time from 2020. We found seven times more clear-cuts in private forests than in public forests, although the surface area of private forests is only three times that of public forests. It was also demonstrated that only 1.6% out of 4 530 dieback reference plots, and 6.2% of maps of forest bark beetle attacks, were confused with clear-cuts before clear-cuts actually occurred, which makes our maps complementary with forest dieback maps. Collectively, the findings of this study could have significant implications for the implementation of a radar-satellite-based system designed for the real-time detection of large-scale clear-cuts in European temperate forests.