Hurricane Ecology: Understanding risk and planning for the future of longleaf pine
Webinar Details
When:
Sep 18, 2024 12:30 pm US/Eastern
Length: 00:45 (hh:mm)
Advance Registration NOT required.
View now on-demand.
Presenter(s):
- Nicole Zampieri, PhD - Post Doctoral Research Scientist, Tall Timbers Research Station & The Jones Center at Ichauway
Virtual Event Format:
Group Viewing Available:
Learn how hurricanes affect the ecology of longleaf pine systems, and hear current research and science supporting mitigation and conservation efforts.
Tropical cyclones recurrently disturb ecosystems in the North American Coastal Plain. Longleaf pine savannas and woodlands, the core ecosystem of this global hotspot, are resistant and resilient to these disturbances. Nonetheless, more frequent and intense hurricanes pose a risk to the conservation of these ecosystems, especially given altered fire regimes.
These ecosystems have been reduced to <5% of their historic extent, are highly fragmented, and are of major conservation significance. Hurricanes of increasing magnitude, coupled with the lack of remaining habitat and altered fire regimes, threaten their persistence. In this work, we review hurricane ecology, summarize risk factors across scales, and detail the need for planning and management actions that anticipate future frequent and intense hurricanes.
We use the southeast longleaf pine geodatabase to categorize extant longleaf pine habitat by stand type, ownership, and state into risk categories for coastal, inland, and continental hurricane regimes.
We review post-hurricane risk to ecosystems, which includes insect outbreaks and management actions, such as salvage logging in the context of fire suppression, which may affect recovery.
Lastly, we summarize recommendations for adaptive management for hurricane resilience. We echo recent calls for action which highlight the need for research, funding agency coordination, and the need for comprehensive disaster recovery planning as an essential climate adaptation strategy for managing for ecosystem health and resilience.
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