Studies of hurricane disturbance and recovery in Puerto Rico using ELM-FATES
Abstract
Tropical cyclones are an important cause of disturbance in coastal tropical and sub-tropical forests. In the past ~30 years, Puerto Rico experienced five hurricanes greater than category 3 (i.e., wind speed larger than 178 km/h); these major storms caused severe forest structural damage and elevated tree mortality. To understand forest function and structure changes pre- and post-hurricane, we use in-situ forest measurements from two sites in the Luquillo Experimental Forest (LEF) in Northeast Puerto Rico and the Functionally Assembled Terrestrial Ecosystem Simulator (FATES), which has been coupled with the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) Land Model (ELM-FATES). We performed numerical experiments replicating hurricane damage on forest structure, simulating tree mortality and defoliation. We examined how different hurricane disturbance intensities affect simulated rates of vegetation and ecosystem recovery among different tree size groups and plant functional types (PFTs), as well as effects of soil properties. This research addresses the importance of representing disturbance caused by severe storms in dynamic vegetation models integrated into Earth System Models.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021AGUFM.B55F1269S