Monitoring disturbance impacts on temperate forest productivity

Bark beetle (BB) infestation is one of the most important biotic disturbances in temperate forests in Europe. Extreme weather conditions have caused a surge in BB outbreaks. Climate change will continue to lead more frequent and severe drought events in the future, this will exacerbate the BB infestation, resulting in significant social and economic consequences. Intensification of BB infestation, cause increased tree mortality, reduced forest density, and a decline in biodiversity. This is expected to affect forest net primary productivity (NPP). The main goal of this research is to assess the impact of BB infestation and change in temperature represented by Land Surface Temperature (LST) a proxy of climate change in NPP in Bavaria Forest National Park (BFNP) (Germany).This research studied variation of time series satellite-adjusted NPP from LPJ-GUESS. Monthly high-resolution NPP maps were generated by incorporating leaf rea index retrieved from Sentinel-2 data, allowing to study variation in NPP at a local scale. Furthermore, the LST was calculated using Landsat-8 thermal data, while BB infestation data was provided by the BFNP administration. The results of our analysis showed the impact of BB infestation and variation of LST on NPP in temperate forest. We observed a gradual decline in NPP due to BB infestation, finding a negative relationship between NPP and infestation intensity. Our results showed the importance of LST to identify dry periods through NPP dynamics.