Abstract
Hurricanes cause severe impacts on forest ecosystems in the United States. These events can substantially alter the carbon biogeochemical cycle at local to regional scales. We selected all tropical storms and more severe events that made U.S. landfall between 1900 and 2011 and used hurricane best track database, a meteorological model (HURRECON), National Land Cover Database (NLCD), U. S. Department of Agirculture Forest Service biomass dataset, and pre- and post-MODIS data to quantify individual event and annual biomass mortality. Our estimates show an average of 18.2 TgC/yr of live biomass mortality for 1900–2011 in the US with strong spatial and inter-annual variability. Results show Hurricane Camille in 1969 caused the highest aboveground biomass mortality with 59.5 TgC. Similarly 1954 had the highest annual mortality with 68.4 TgC attributed to landfalling hurricanes. The results presented are deemed useful to further investigate historical events, and the methods outlined are potentially beneficial to quantify biomass loss in future events.
Highlights
Hurricanes cause severe impacts on forest ecosystems in the United States
The long-term annual average biomass mortality from this study (18.2 TgC/yr for 1900–2011) was comparable with the results from Zeng, et al.[2], who estimated an average of 19.5 TgC/yr live biomass loss for the 1900–2000 period after synthesizing field measurements, performing satellite image analysis, and using some complex empirical models
Annual biomass mortality in this study was an aggregation of mortality from all events of the particular year on a pixel-by-pixel basis, and biomass mortality from individual events was estimated using some simple datasets and field-measured coefficients
Summary
Hurricanes cause severe impacts on forest ecosystems in the United States These events can substantially alter the carbon biogeochemical cycle at local to regional scales. Hurricanes in the North Atlantic, are major natural disturbances that are part of life in the southern and eastern United States causing severe impacts on forest ecosystems in the region[1,2,3]. Long-term impacts may include rapid or slowed tree mortality, changes in successional direction, increased species turnover and age class diversity, and faster biomass allocation and carbon storage[1,4,5,6]. Intense hurricanes can cause substantial damage to a forest but their size alone is not enough to determine how much live tree biomass results in as debris. Nielsen[6] used Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data, and environmental and meteorological information to predict the level of damage to forests in the Katrina impact www.nature.com/scientificreports
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