Quantifying mangrove canopy regrowth and recovery after Hurricane Irma with large-scale repeat airborne lidar in the Florida Everglades

Estimating Structural Damage to Mangrove Forests Using Airborne Lidar Imagery: Case Study of Damage Induced by the 2017 Hurricane Irma to Mangroves in the Florida Everglades, USA

“…We plotted Tree Mean and AGN from each of the 13 field plots ( Figure 9 ) and found that there is a positive linear relationship between the two metrics, suggesting that tree height may play a role in mangrove vulnerability during hurricane impacts. Previous studies have shown that taller mangroves are more vulnerable to damage [ 8 , 9 ]. The high amounts of AGN positively correlating with tall mangrove tree heights also shows this relationship between mangrove height and vulnerability from hurricane disturbances.…”

“…A recent study using lidar also confirmed that the majority of the damage from Hurricane Irma was concentrated in tall mangroves (15–25 m tall) and that shorter mangroves (<5 m) are more resilient to storm effects and experience the least amount of damage [ 9 ]. This study also found that only 38.1% of mangroves that experienced canopy loss from Hurricane Irma had recovered to pre-storm canopy height almost 2.5 years later, which provides further evidence that hurricanes significantly alter mangrove canopy structure and overall height distribution of mangroves within the study region post-hurricane [ 9 ]. These studies prove that remote sensing is a powerful tool in being able to detect large-scale effects of hurricane disturbance on mangroves, but the majority of these studies have only been able to quantify changes to mangroves from a canopy level.…”

“…Due to the geographic location in the sub-tropics, mangroves in South Florida are periodically impacted by tropical storms and hurricanes [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. Mangroves in South Florida have been impacted by four major hurricanes over the past three decades (Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma in 2005, and Hurricane Irma in 2017).…”

“…No available study has been able to detect volumes of damage in terms of aboveground necromass (AGN). Modeling and estimating volumes of AGN would allow us to better understand how hurricanes affect mangrove tree structure and not just the canopy as documented in previous studies [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ].…”

“…In this study, we use airborne lidar data obtained from NASA’s Goddard’s Lidar, Hyperspectral & Thermal Imager (G-LiHT) and field data to estimate hurricane-induced structural damages of mangrove forests in the Florida Everglades following the passage of Hurricane Irma on 10 September 2017 across the region. G-LiHT has been successfully used in past studies in both South Florida and Puerto Rico in order to detect changes in mangroves after a hurricane disturbance, making it a very useful tool [ 8 , 9 , 13 ]. Our main objective is to quantify volumes of damage and analyze the distribution of damage (i.e., AGN) to the mangroves of the Everglades following Hurricane Irma.…”