Abstract
Ice storms greatly affect the structure, dynamics, and functioning of forest ecosystems. Studies on the impact of such disasters, as well as the post-disaster recovery of forests, are important contents in forest biology, ecology, and geography. Remote-sensing technology provides data and methods that can support the study of disasters at the large-to-medium scale and over long time periods. This study took Chebaling National Nature Reserve in Guangdong Province, China, as the study area. First, field-survey data and remote-sensing data were comprehensively analyzed to demonstrate the feasibility of replacing the forest stock volume with the mean annual value of the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), to study forest growth and change. We then used the EVI from 2007 to 2017, together with a variety of other remote-sensing and forest sub-compartment data, to analyze the impact of the 2008 ice storm and the subsequent post-disaster recovery of the forest. Finally, we drew the following conclusions: (1) Topography had a considerable effect on disaster impact and forest recovery in Chebaling. The forest at high altitudes (700–1000 m) and on steep slopes (25–40°) was seriously affected by this disaster but had a stronger post-disaster recovery ability. Meanwhile, the hardest-hit area for coniferous forest was higher and steeper than that for broad-leaved forest. (2) In the same terrain conditions, coniferous forests were less affected by the disaster than broad-leaved forests and showed less variation during the post-disaster recovery process. Nevertheless, broad-leaved forests had faster recovery rates and higher recovery degrees; (3) Under the influence of human activities, the recovery and fluctuation degree for planted forest in the post-disaster recovery process was significantly higher than that for natural forest. The study suggests that forest has high disaster resistance and self-recovery ability after the ice storm, and this ability has a strong correlation with the type of forest and the topographic factors such as elevation and slope. At the same time, human intervention can speed up the recovery of forests after disasters.
Highlights
Natural disasters, such as snowstorms, ice storms, earthquakes, landslides, tornadoes, volcanoes, hurricanes, and other types of disasters, affect natural ecosystems in complex and profound ways [1,2,3,4]
The effects of topography and forest types on disaster impact and post-disaster recovery were analyzed from two aspects of single factor and multiple factor, respectively
Our results indicate that topography had a considerable effect on disaster impact and forest recovery, and elevation was more decisive than slope in disaster impact
Summary
Natural disasters, such as snowstorms, ice storms, earthquakes, landslides, tornadoes, volcanoes, hurricanes, and other types of disasters, affect natural ecosystems in complex and profound ways [1,2,3,4]. Forest ecosystems are disturbed by such disasters, with the effects including the decline in tree density, loss of forest cover, and the change of biodiversity [5,6]. The evaluation of the impact of disasters on forest ecosystems and of post-disaster recovery have been important areas of research in forestry and ecology [10,11,12]. Most areas of Southern China were severely affected by ice storm between 11 January and 5 February 2008. Many studies on ice-storm assessment were published Some of these studies used MODIS remote-sensing data, DEM data, and forest-resource-distribution maps to analyze the impact of the disaster on different types of forests on a large scale [14,15,16]. Most relevant studies have focused on the destruction of forests caused by this ice storm; few have looked at forest recovery
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