Higher Vulnerability But Faster Recovery in Planted Than Natural Forests During the 2022 Compound Drought–Heatwave in China's Yangtze River Basin

Abstract Although planted forests (PFs) contribute greatly to soil and water conservation in the Yangtze River Basin and are central to afforestation efforts in China, their resilience to compound drought and heatwave (CDHW) events remains poorly understood. The unprecedented CDHW event in 2022 provided a unique opportunity to assess the responses of PFs and natural forests (NFs) to such extreme climatic disturbances. Using kernel‐normalized difference vegetation index (kNDVI), gross primary productivity (GPP), and solar‐induced chlorophyll fluorescence (GOSIF), we found that PFs experienced larger declines than NFs during the event year, but recovered more rapidly in the following year under alleviated climatic conditions, revealing a clear resistance–recovery trade‐off. For both kNDVI and GPP, NFs showed weaker declines and PFs showed faster recovery in more than 70% of grids. NFs, with their taller canopies, greater biomass, and higher species diversity, exhibited stronger resistance, whereas PFs, dominated by simpler and younger stands, demonstrated higher recovery potential. Recovery differences between the two forest types became most evident under extreme and exceptional CDHW conditions. XGBoost coupled with SHAP analysis further showed that structural differences between forest types, particularly canopy height differences, were the strongest predictors of recovery divergence, while the effects of edaphic, compositional, and climatic variables varied among indicators. These findings provide new empirical evidence that NFs and PFs play complementary roles in ecosystem stability and recovery, offering critical implications for water resource management under the projected intensification of CDHWs.