Natural disasters and economic development drive forest dynamics and transition in China

China has been implementing the world's most ambitious afforestation and forest conservation programs and undergoing rapid forest expansion since 1990s, thus, understanding the forest dynamics in China has global implications for sustainable forest management. Through analyzing forest area, biomass dynamics, and factors influencing deforestation and forest restoration, we found that the natural disasters and economic development drove forest dynamics and transition in China. The growth of the economy and population drove up demand for forest products, facilitating deforestation. The booming economy also boosted government's investment in forest restoration and conservation programs. Natural disasters damaged and frequently destroyed forests, but they also served as stimuli for the authorities to adopt remedy forestry policies and programs that ultimately led to forest increase. Nationwide, increasing peaks of annual afforestation were observed in the late 1950s, early 1980s, and early 2000s, and the newly increased area closed for forest restoration reached the peak in 1998. All these peaks were closely associated with peaks of natural disasters (i.e., floods, drought, and dust storm events). Based on the dynamics of forest area, biomass and forest consumption over the past 40 years, forest transition occurred during the late 1980s to the early 1990s, and it also strengthened the carbon (C) sink function of forests in China (with an increasing rate of 0.137 Pg C yr.−1 during 1994–2008). Overall, our study highlighted the influences of natural disasters and economic development on the forestry policies and forest C dynamics in the newly industrialized country.