Data for: Unravelling the spatial and temporal variability of natural disturbances in European forests

Despite disturbances intensifying across European forests, it is not well
known how their baseline regimes and trends vary across regions and
disturbance agents. Here, we assessed the main disturbance regimes in
European forests based on their mean size, severity, and frequency for (i)
fires and (ii) wind and bark beetle disturbances, as well as their
spatiotemporal variability. We used the European Forest Disturbance Atlas
(Viana et al. 2025) to characterise 3,825,259 disturbance events that
occurred in European forests between 1985 and 2023.
Using Gaussian finite mixture models, we identified the dominant
disturbance clusters (i.e., disturbance regimes) for the two agent groups
and quantified the spatial variability of disturbances both between and
within biomes (boreal, temperate, Mediterranean). Finally, we compared
changes in disturbance clusters over time by splitting the study period
into three intervals and assessing cluster shifts from the first to the
third period (1985–1997 and 2011–2023), as well as annual trends from 1985
to 2023. We found that fire regimes exhibited a marked north–south
latitudinal gradient: severe and rare fires occurred in boreal and
temperate biomes, whereas moderate, and large and frequent fires
predominated initerr,anean and temperate–Mediterranean transitional
forests. For wind and bark beetle disturbances, we identified four
distinct regimes: moderate disturbances predominated in boreal and
temperate biomes; mild and rare disturbances occurred in Mediterranean and
temperate–Mediterranean forests; and frequent and small, as well as severe
and large disturbances, predominated in Central Europe and the British
Isles, respectively. Approximately 15% of all grid cells shifted to a
different disturbance regime during the study period. Fire frequency and
severity declined in temperate and Mediterranean forests between the first
and second periods (1985–1997 and 1998–2010). Wind and bark beetle
disturbances decreased in size in boreal and temperate forests during the
same interval, followed by increases in disturbance severity in temperate
forests between the second and third periods (1998–2010 and 2011–2023).