COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

THE URIARTE LAB

Department of Ecology, Evolution & Environmental Biology

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RAPID: HURRICANE MARIA: ASSESSING LANDSCAPE RESILIENCE TO A CHANGING DISTURBANCE REGIME

Collaborators

Jess Zimmerman, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras

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: National Science Foundation. DEB.