Reforestation is observed in several tropical countries, mostly in marginal lands including mountain
environments. Bhutan, a landlocked and mountainous country characterized by a long tradition of
environmental preservation, is considered as one of the few tropical countries which has experienced a
recent forest transition, i.e., a shift from net loss to net increase of forest cover. However, doubts persist
regarding the contemporary evolution of forest cover in Bhutan as two recent studies reported opposite
trends. The objective of this study was to assess whether a forest transition did indeed recently take
place in Bhutan. We used topographically corrected Landsat images from 1990, 2001/2002, and 2011 to
detect and quantify forest cover change trajectories over Bhutan. Results of the land cover classifications
confirmed that forest cover in Bhutan remained very stable, with a forested area covering more than 60%
of the country. For both time periods, gross and net forest cover changes were remarkably small. A trend
reversal occurred as a net forest loss of 91 km2 during the 1990s was followed by a net forest gain of
52 km2 during the following decade. This small transition resulted from both an increase in rates of forest
gain and a decrease in rates of forest loss, mostly affecting the broadleaf forest ecosystem of southern
low-elevation districts. Northern districts covered by coniferous forests did not contribute to the forest
transition. A spatially explicit comparison of our forest cover change maps with two previous studies
highlighted the importance of a robust validation of change detection results and of a topographic
correction of remote sensing images in rugged environments, as performed in this study. These recent
forest cover changes can be explained by socio-economic and political changes associated with the
opening of the country to trade, which induced a gradual transition from subsistence shifting cultivation
to market-oriented agriculture. This study confirmed that the high forest cover of Bhutan was maintained
since 1990, with a slight increase during the 2000s.