Widespread mangrove damage resulting from the 2017 Atlantic mega hurricane season
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15548263 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paul J Taillie (0000-0001-7172-3589, University of Florida, corresponding author), Rosa Maria Roman-Cuesta (0000-0002-6945-8402, Center for International Forestry Research), Rosa Roman-Cuesta, David Lagomasino (0000-0003-4008-5363, East Carolina University), Miguel Cifuentes-Jara, Miguel Cifuentes (0000-0002-6560-947X, Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza Catie), Temilola Fatoyinbo (0000-0002-1130-6748, Goddard Space Flight Center), Lesley Ott (0000-0002-0035-9625, Goddard Space Flight Center), Lesley E Ott, Benjamin Poulter (0000-0002-9493-8600, Goddard Space Flight Center) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 064010-064010 |
| Publication date | 2020-03-24 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Research Letters (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1748-9326 • E-ISSN: 1748-9326 |
| Publisher | IOP Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1088/1748-9326/ab82cf |
| OpenAlex | W3014025113 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 40 |
Comprised of 17 named tropical storms, 6 of which were major hurricanes, the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season ranked as one of the most damaging and costly hurricane seasons on record. In addition to socio-economic impacts, many previous studies have shown that important coastal ecosystems like mangroves are shaped by severe storms. However, little is known about how the cumulative effects of storms over entire hurricane seasons affect mangroves across large regions. We used satellite imagery from the entire Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico region to show that 2017 resulted in disproportionate mangrove damage compared to baseline responses over the previous 8 years. Specifically, we observed 30 times more mangrove damage, via a reduction in the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), during 2017 compared to any of the eight previous hurricane seasons, and most (72%) of this damage persisted throughout the 7 month post-hurricane season period as indicated by no NDVI recovery. Furthermore, wind speed, rainfall, and canopy height data showed that mangrove damage primarily resulted from high maximum wind speeds, but flooding (cumulative rainfall), previous storm history, and mangrove structure (canopy height) were also important predictors of damage. While mangroves are known to be resilient to hurricane impacts, our results suggest that increasingly frequent mega-hurricane seasons in the Caribbean region will dramatically alter mangrove disturbance dynamics
Atlantic hurricane · Biology · Climate change · Climatology · Flooding (psychology · Geography · Growing season · Mangrove · Meteorology · Normalized Difference Vegetation Index · Physical geography · Storm · Tropical cyclone · Coastal and Marine Dynamics · Coastal wetland ecosystem dynamics · Environmental Science · Tropical and Extratropical Cyclones Research · Ecology · Geology · Oceanography
Tropical cyclones and climate change
Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years
Mangrove forests
Assessing the present and future probability of Hurricane Harvey’s rainfall
Mangrove Forests
Coastal flooding by tropical cyclones and sea-level rise
Measuring mangrove carbon loss and gain in deltas
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,6 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2025 (5) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |