Hurricane damage to forests: Scientists study impacts on carbon cycle
(PhysOrg.com) -- When we think of carbon emissions that exacerbate global climate change most of us probably think of the exhaust from automobiles and other vehicles, or smoke billowing from rows of stacks at fossil fuel-burning power plants. But there is a source of large carbon emissions that is not so immediately obvious the destruction of forest trees through hurricanes. For example, studies led by Jeffrey Chambers, who is now with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), have shown that Hurricane Katrina, the storm that flooded New Orleans and pounded the Gulf coastal areas of Mississippi and Louisiana, uprooted or severely damaged roughly 320 million trees. In terms of the carbon cycle, this devastating loss of vegetation from a single storm was equivalent to about a 10-percent increase in U.S. fossil fuel emissions for a year.