# Monitoring Changes in the Enhanced Vegetation Index to Inform the Management of Forests
## 5 Conclusions  
Forest EVI changes may result from processes that occurred in the recent past or spatially nearby (i.e., temporal and spatial lagged effects) and/or due to historical spatial legacies [84]. In this sense, EVI breaks and trends are not only due to multiple drivers but their relative contribution varies through time. While EVI mostly reflects forest canopy conditions, we found that most of the changes detected were negative breaks occurring mostly in non-protected areas and that not all negative breaks detected could be linked to disturbance data (i.e., forest fires, harvest, and insect damage). The negative and positive breaks detected were related to forest age and climate conditions (summer droughts and warm winters) and climate variables were found to have multi-year lag effects on EVI values. Protected forest pixels showed proportionally fewer negative and more positive breaks compared to non-protected forest pixels. Furthermore, on average, the magnitude of abrupt greening was higher in protected forest pixels compared to non-protected forest pixels suggesting that protected forests are healthier. The most common trend class in the study area involved greening with the highest proportion occurring in non-protected forests. Relatively large clusters of long-term browning trends were located in the northeast region of the study area. Further assessment of the spatiotemporal patterns of EVI breaks and trends is needed to shed light on the local drivers of forest health and their potential effects on forest ecosystem services and dynamics.  
Conceptualization: P.S.R., A.M.S. and M.-J.F.; methodology: P.S.R., A.M.S. and M.-J.F.; formal analysis, P.S.R.; data curation, P.S.R.; writing: P.S.R., M.-J.F., A.M.S. and A.G.; funding acquisition: M.-J.F. and A.G. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for ResNet; (funding reference number NSERC NETGP 523374-18). Cette recherche a ete financee par le Conseil de recherches en sciences naturelles et en genie du Canada (CRSNG); (numero de reference NSERC NETGP 523374-18). [PERSON] acknowledges funding from the NSERC of Canada Discovery Grant (no. 5134) and the NSERC Canada Research Chair (CRC). [PERSON] acknowledges support from the [PERSON] Chair in Biodiversity Conservation and the NSERC Discovery program.  
The original data presented in this study are openly available in the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) (doi:10.5067/MODIS/MOD13 QI.061).  
We thank [PERSON] for his valuable advice and suggestions. We also thank [PERSON] and [PERSON] for their support and feedback. Lastly, we thank the Digital Research Alliance of Canada for providing high-performance computing resources for our research.  
Author [PERSON] was employed by the company Apex Resource Management Solutions. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.