When Hurricane Maria strike Puerto Rico in September 2017 , itknocked out powerisland - wide , battered infrastructure , andstripped forests of their farewell . Over the month that ensued , upwards of a thousandpeople would die as a result of the tempest . So would about 30 million tree .
That last stunning digit comes good manners of research introduce last week at the American Geophysical Union annual group meeting . Columbia University timber ecologist Maria Uriarte spoke at a wardrobe conference about her group ’s on-going efforts to document Hurricane Maria ’s shock on Puerto Rican forest , by visiting 30 long - terminal figure forest - monitor plot across the island in the eight months following the storm and surveying harm among trees with a stem diam of 10 centimeters ( 4 column inch ) or larger .
twin this field sight with planet data , Uriarte estimates that 20 million to 40 million Tree were pour down or sternly damaged island - widely . That represents 15 percent to 25 percent of all large trees on the island , she told Earther . The dead and dying trees contain an estimated 5.75 million tons of carbon that could be released to the ambiance as they crumble , tantamount to 2.5 pct of the carbon taken up each year in forests across the United States .
AerialLiDAR surveys flown by NASAin April 2017 offer another view on the damage . As NASA Earth scientist Doug Morton explain at the wardrobe conference , the 3D example these surveys produced reveal that Puerto Rico ’s forest became about a third shorter on average as the storm tore through . About 60 percent of all canopy Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree incurred some damage .
“ The storm came through and literally gave the forest a haircut , ” Morton said .
That mean more luminousness is now reaching the woodland floor , which together with the pulse of nutrients deport by all the downed vegetation , means thing are regrow quickly . But there ’s no warrantee the forests that come back will look like the ones that existed prior to the hurricane .
As Uriarte pointed out , palm tree do quite well during the storm , while full-grown hardwoods suffered pregnant equipment casualty . As trees that broke pass away a slow expiry over the fare year , ribbon could become more dominant , with cascading effects on wildlife that swear on these coinage for food and shelter .
Researchers will continue to collect datum for old age to seek to understand what these changes mean for Puerto Rico ’s El Yunque rainforest in the northeast , thetropical ironical forestsin the southwestward , and elsewhere . Puerto Rico is no stranger to hurricane , but as Uriarte accentuate , Maria ’s impacts were very different from previous major tempest like Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and Hurricane Georges in 1998 .
tree diagram price and fatality rate were gamey during Maria , for one , but the way in which the forest were damage also differ . While in past major violent storm , variation in wrong across the landscape painting was preponderantly drive by idle words , in 2017 , it was rain that mattered more .
In the northeastern United States at least , this could be due to the back - to - back deluge of Hurricanes Irma and Maria which make the dirt to become saturated , Uriarte said . “ It seems the risk factors have shifted from what we traditionally thought mattered , ” she read during the pressure conference .
A big business , Uriarte go on , is what the climate change - juiced hurricanes of the hereafter — which could have somewhat higher farting fastness and substantially dandy rain — will mean for these forests and the ecosystem services they put up , let in keeping solid amount of carbon locked away . Uriarte recite Earther she ’s “ absolutely ” concerned about these woods switching from atomic number 6 sinks to sources as the effects of exasperate tragedy mob up .
Morton underscore that Hurricane Maria was n’t the final stage of the story , and that Puerto Rico ’s forests are on a road to recovery . But , he said , 2017 was “ a major variety that affects the trajectory of the woods over time . ”
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