The catastrophic 8.0 Richter magnitude earthquake that occurred on 12 May 2008 in Wenchuan, China caused extensive damage to vegetation due to widespread landslides and debris flows. In the past five years, the Chinese government has implemented a series of measures to restore the vegetation in the severely afflicted area. How is the vegetation recovering? It is necessary and important to evaluate the vegetation recovery effect in earthquake-stricken areas. Based on MODIS NDVI data from 2005 to 2013, the vegetation damage area was extracted by the quantified threshold detection method. The vegetation recovery rate after five years following the earthquake was evaluated with respect to counties, altitude, fault zones, earthquake intensity, soil texture and vegetation types, and assessed over time. We have proposed a new method to obtain the threshold with vegetation damage quantitatively, and have concluded that: (1) The threshold with vegetation damage was 13.47%, and 62.09% of the field points were located in the extracted damaged area; (2) The total vegetation damage area was 475,688 ha, which accounts for 14.34% of the study area and was primarily distributed in the central fault zone, the southwest mountainous areas and along rivers in the Midwest region of the study area; (3) Vegetation recovery in the damaged area was better in the northeast regions of the study area, and in the western portion of the Wenchuan-Maoxian fracture; vegetation recovery was better with increasing altitude; there is no obvious relationship between clay content in the topsoil and vegetation recovery; (4) Meadows recovered best and the worst recovery was in mixed coniferous broad-leaved forest; (5) 81,338 ha of vegetation in the damage area is currently undergoing degradation and the main vegetation types in the degradation area are coniferous forest (31.39%) and scrub (34.17%); (6) From 2009 to 2013, 41% has been restored to the level before the earthquake, 9% has not returned but 50% will continue to recover. The Chinese government usually requires five years as a period for post-disaster reconstruction. This paper could be regarded as a guidance for Chinese government departments, whereby additional investment is encouraged for vegetation recovery.

The concept of resilience was integrated into post-earthquake ecological restoration assessments in 10 counties heavily impacted by the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. Ecological resilience was defined as the time interval required for the vegetation coverage to recover to pre-earthquake levels in damaged areas. MODIS-EVI data from May to August in 2000 to 2016 were used to calculate the ecological resilience by fitting the curve of recovery rate (RR) versus time. The following conclusions were reached: (1) An area of 424.1 km² sustained vegetation damage. (2) The vegetation recovery was found to be linear based on the statistical analysis of the most common components of the damaged areas; consequently, linear fitting was used to estimate the resilience. (3) In terms of vegetation coverage, 44.2% of the damaged areas have already recovered. The vast majority of damaged areas are predicted to achieve vegetation recovery by 2022, but 5.3% of the damaged areas will not recover within this time period and have no resilience. (4) The management of damaged areas near roads, rivers and mining operations, especially at elevations of 2000–2500 m, slopes greater than 30°, and precipitation levels greater than 1200 mm, should be prioritized in the future. (5) The innovations of this study include the method used to extract earthquake-related vegetation damage and the prediction of vegetation succession based on resilience.