Abstract
An extreme disturbance event is one in which any of its component disturbance forces and their interactions with affected systems have dimensions and responses that exceed the known range of variation expected of those parameters. If the exposed system does not respond or exhibits a low level response to an event, the event was not extreme to the exposed system, regardless of the dimensions of its disturbance forces. Extreme disturbance events are complex and require disaggregation to improve understanding of their effects. The areas affected by extreme events and the duration of the events are related but involve many orders of magnitude in terms of area affected and duration. One way to compare events is through a common and objective unit of measure such as energy. A comparison of ten extreme events in terms of their power and total energy delivered per unit area revealed a broad range of values among them. The power of events ranged 8 orders of magnitude and the total load per unit area ranged 14 orders of magnitude. Each event had different points of interaction with exposed ecosystems. When exposed to the same extreme event, the response of social systems is different from the response of the ecological systems. Also, social systems recovered quicker to a category 3 hurricane than did ecological systems. Both social and ecological systems have the capacity to evolve, adapt, innovate, and develop novelty in response to the selective pressure of extreme events.
Highlights
Extreme disturbance events are at center stage among social-ecological scientists dealing with issues of sustainability, climate change, and resiliency
At the onset of ecosystem-level ecology in the 1970s (Golley 1993) ecologists paid little attention to extreme events because ecological attention was focused on the understanding of complex mature ecosystems at steady state
The passage of hurricane Hugo over Puerto Rico in 1989 was a wake-up call to ecologists regarding the effects of extreme events on the functioning of island forests
Summary
Extreme disturbance events ( on extreme events) are at center stage among social-ecological scientists dealing with issues of sustainability, climate change, and resiliency. In Puerto Rico, for example, the study of ecological systems progressed through a period of about 60 years uninterrupted by extreme events (Lugo 1996) This gave ecologists an opportunity to improve understanding of the functioning of rain, wet, moist, and dry tropical forests in the absence of disturbances. The passage of hurricane Hugo over Puerto Rico in 1989 was a wake-up call to ecologists regarding the effects of extreme events on the functioning of island forests. This 4-h event and its ecological consequences led to a new synthesis of how tropical forests respond to disturbances (Brokaw et al 2012). The US Weather Service measured the highest 24-h rainfall precipitation on record for the city (234 mm) and estimated a 50 years recurrence interval for this event
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