LAUSR

Significance The future of forests is crucial for the Earth system, yet anticipating and detecting forest change is challenging because trees are long lived, and stand development takes many decades. We suggest that it is not necessary to wait for such extended time periods to see forest changes unfold. Rather, altered dynamics can be anticipated by focusing on the reorganization phase, the short but critical period after disturbance when “the deck is reshuffled,” because early stand development pathways are often locked in for decades to centuries. We present a synthetic framework for studying forest reorganization in a changing world and propose a research agenda to better understand and predict forest change.