Forest ecosystems

which are major parts of the terrestrial biosphere

play an important role in terrestrial carbon cycling and storage. However

the accuracy of forest carbon-flux estimation is greatly influenced by the lack of forest disturbance data. Thus

we conduct a study in Wuning County in Southern China by adopting a time-series trajectory analysis technique to detect forest disturbances in 14 Landsat Thematic Mapper / Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus images from 1986 to 2011. This technique not only identifies forest disturbance

but also provides vegetation recovery information. By analyzing the time-space disturbance characteristics of forest disturbance

we found that Wuning County has suffered from a significantly dramatic disturbance in the 1990s

most of which has occurred in low-elevation areas because of human activities. Compared with field observations

the Kappa coefficient of our disturbance products reaches 0. 80 with an overall accuracy of 89. 7%

thus indicating the significant potential of the technique for forest disturbance monitoring.