Long-term effects of catastrophic wind on southern US coastal forests: Lessons from a major hurricane

Abstract

Threats posed by windstorms are an increasing concern to forest managers in the southern United States (US). Studies suggest that the southern US will experience an increase in the occurrence as well as the intensity of windstorms, such as hurricanes, in the future. However, forest managers may have difficulty preparing for this future because there is limited understanding of how windstorms affect the structure and composition of forests over the long term. In this study, we evaluated the impacts of Hurricane Ivan, which made landfall in September 2004 near Gulf Shore, Alabama, impacting forests in the western Florida Panhandle and southwestern Alabama. We acquired the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plot data available for the period from 2002 to 2018 for the Ivan-affected area and classified the plots into 4 categories: (1). ND (No Disturbance), (2). NDBH (No Disturbance but Harvested), (3). ID (Disturbance caused by Hurricane Ivan), and (4). IDAH (Disturbance caused by Hurricane Ivan and Harvested). The plots that were damaged by Hurricane Ivan (ID and IDAH plots) had significantly (α = 0.05) (1) higher basal area, (2) higher quadratic mean diameter and height, (3) more diverse tree species composition (species richness and Shannon diversity index), (4) denser stocking of seedling and saplings, (5) lower proportion of dead trees or saplings, and (6) higher live aboveground biomass than the plots that were not damaged by the hurricane (ND and NDBH plots). Diverse stands were not necessarily more windstorm resistant. Species diversity in the overstory may not improve forest resistance to hurricane damage but may improve its resilience following the hurricane. The study suggests that managing stand structure through density management and stand improvement could be critical to windstorm resilience and resistance in the southern US forests.

Assessing the Impact of Hurricane Ivan on Aboveground Carbon of Coastal Forests in Perdido Bay, Florida

“…In the affected plots, the average aboveground carbon loss was estimated to be about 26 metric ton/ha. Our results were consistent with previous research that found hurricanes caused the most damage to large-diameter stands in major forest types in the southeastern US (Ojha et al, 2020;Platt et al, 2000;Sharma et al, 2021;Zampieri et al, 2020). (Chevalier et al, 2022a, b) applied experimental forest management techniques by trimming the canopy to regenerate aboveground carbon but reported continued carbon loss in larger trees after severe Hurricane Maria.…”

Implications of changing trends in hydroclimatic and water quality parameters on estuarine habitats in the Gulf Coastal Plain

“…This sensitivity to land management may be especially relevant in forested land, which is the predominant land cover type in catchments of the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama (Le et al, 2015), and especially in the lower portions of the Escambia and Choctawhatchee River catchments. In addition to timber harvesting potentially leading to increased low-flow conditions, high-intensity hurricanes that altered forest cover in the 21st Century (Sharma et al, 2021) Waterbody identification within Perdido Bay system with at least 10 years of data, illustrating significant increasing, decreasing, or no trend observed (α = 0.05) with long-term datasets indicated by darker symbols and short-term in lighter symbols for turbidity (red/pink), total suspended solids (orange/ yellow), and salinity (dark gray/white).…”

Scenario Planning and Simulation in Disaster Response

“…The main purpose behind the extra step of preparedness is the assurance of less mortality rate and the fastest recovery despite the extreme disasters. The scenario above can be best understood by the examples of Florida (US), which recovered from multiple hurricanes [7], recovery of Japan from the 1995 earthquake [8], and Darwin, Australia recovered when prone to Cyclone Tracy with 70% destruction of building [9].…”