Hurricane Mar\xeda tripled stem breaks and doubled tree mortality relative to other major storms

María Uriarte,Jess K Zimmerman,Jill Thompson

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-09319-2

Abstract

Tropical cyclones are expected to intensify under a warming climate, with uncertain effects on tropical forests. One key challenge to predicting how more intense storms will influence these ecosystems is to attribute impacts specifically to storm meteorology rather than differences in forest characteristics. Here we compare tree damage data collected in the same forest in Puerto Rico after Hurricanes Hugo (1989, category 3), Georges (1998, category 3), and María (2017, category 4). María killed twice as many trees as Hugo, and for all but two species, broke 2- to 12-fold more stems than the other two storms. Species with high density wood were resistant to uprooting, hurricane-induced mortality, and were protected from breakage during Hugo but not María. Tree inventories and a wind exposure model allow us to attribute these differences in impacts to storm meteorology. A better understanding of risk factors associated with tree species susceptibility to severe storms is key to predicting the future of forest ecosystems under climate warming.

Highlights

The expected changes in hurricane winds and rainfall may have profound consequences for the long-term resilience of tropical forests in the North Atlantic basin
Extensive tree inventories and a wind exposure model allow us to ascribe these differences in impacts to variation in storm meteorology
Hurricane María killed twice as many stems as Hugo in the Luquillo Forest Dynamics Plot (LFDP) (Fig. 2, Supplementary Table 1–3)

Summary

Introduction

The expected changes in hurricane winds and rainfall may have profound consequences for the long-term resilience of tropical forests in the North Atlantic basin. We employ tree damage and mortality data collected after three storms in a secondary tropical forest in Puerto Rico that developed after human disturbance during the first half of the 20th century[9]. We use these data to evaluate the effects of differences in wind speeds and tropicalcyclone rainfall rates on the forest and to identify the risk factors that moderated species vulnerabilities to storms of varying severities. Large trees were more likely to break in María but not Hugo Taken together, these results suggest that more severe storms expected under a changing climate can alter species composition and size composition of these forests

Methods

Results

Conclusion