Centennial recovery of recent human-disturbed forests

International commitments are challenging countries to restore their
degraded lands, particularly forests. These commitments require global
assessments of recovery timescales and trajectories of different forest
attributes to inform restoration strategies. We use a meta-chronosequence
approach including 125 forest chronosequences to reconstruct the past (c.
300 years), and model future recovery trajectories of forests recovering
from agriculture and logging impacts. We found recovering forests
significantly differed from undisturbed ones after 150 years and projected
that difference to remain for up to 218 or 494 years for ecosystem
attributes like nitrogen stocks or species similarity, respectively. These
conservative estimates, however, do not capture the complexity of forest
ecosystems. A centennial recovery of forests requires strategic,
unprecedented planning to deliver a restored world.