Forest Health Experts Eye Hurricane Damage in North Carolina’s Coastal Forests
For some residents of the North Carolina coast, the 2014 Independence Day weekend will be remembered not for fireworks and family cookouts, but for damage assessment and cleanup following the high winds and heavy rain that downed trees when Hurricane Arthur came ashore on July 3. Eastern Threat Center researchers believe that Arthur did relatively little harm to the state’s coastal forests, but they will continue to watch for delayed impacts of the storm using the satellite imagery-based ForWarn—a forest disturbance monitoring tool which provides maps that compare current vegetation greenness with that of the previous year, the last three years, and the past decade. Of greater concern to the researchers and ForWarn users in North Carolina are the lingering effects of another storm — 2011’s Hurricane Irene. Read more in CompassLive...
