Assessing post-fire forest structure recovery by combining LiDAR data and Landsat time series in Mediterranean pine forests

•Short to long-term recovery evaluated attending to cover, height and heterogeneity.•Vegetation cover recovered to a pre-fire state but mean height did not.•Less than 50% of burned pixels recovered to a pre-fire structure 26 years post-fire.•LiDAR-derived forest variables extrapolated to Landsat with moderate accuracy.