COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY THE
URIARTE LAB Department of Ecology, Evolution &
Environmental Biology |
Catastrophic Forest Disturbance and Regrowth in Puerto Rico Following
Hurricane Maria: Benchmarks for Earth System Models from Forest Inventory and
Remote Sensing Measurements Collaborators
Doug Morton (NASA Goddard), Michael Keller (USFS) and Sebastian
Martinuzzi (USFS) The
mechanisms of tree mortality and forest canopy damage are poorly represented
in current Earth System Models. We are
leveraging extensive forest inventory and airborne remote sensing data
acquired before and after Hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico to
quantify variability in tree mortality and canopy damage. We will study canopy damage, mortality, and
post-disturbance forest recovery across landscape gradients in climate,
geology, topography, forest age, past land use and species composition. Time
series of field and airborne remote sensing data will enable us to contrast
hurricane damage with estimates of background forest mortality and canopy
dynamics in the absence of storms across the entire island. New landscape-level knowledge of damage,
mortality, and post-disturbance recovery will provide benchmark data sets for
modeling changes in forest structure, composition, and biogeochemical cycling
from forest disturbance. Together,
these studies will advance our mechanistic understanding of tropical forest
resilience to catastrophic disturbance as a function of disturbance
intensity, climate, geology, topography, forest age,
past land use and species composition. These advances are necessary to
improve representation of vegetation demography and successional recovery
from disturbance in Earth System Models at ecologically meaningful spatial
and temporal scales. Fig. 1. Assessing forest
damage in the Toro Negro forest reserve in Central Puerto Rico, January 2018 (photo
credit: Kevin Krajick). Fig. 2. Assessing forest damage in the
Carite Forest in central Puerto Rico, January 2018 (photo credit: Kevin
Krajick) Fig. 3. Assessing forest damage in the
Guilarte Forest Reserve, January 2018 (photo credit: Kevin Krajick) Funding: DOE TES. |
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