How Hurricane Maria’s heavy rains devastated Puerto Rico’s forests
Wind may be the usual suspect for knocking down trees during hurricanes, but a new survey of forest damage in Puerto Rico after back-to-back hurricanes in 2017 highlights the power of a strong downpour. When Hurricane Irma passed off the coast of Puerto Rico on September 6, 2017, the storm brought heavy rains but minimal forest damage. Hurricane Maria, which struck two weeks later, was a different story. The strongest hurricane to make direct landfall in Puerto Rico in almost a century, Maria brought wind speeds over 200 kilometers per hour and dropped nearly 1.5 meters of rain in two days on some areas. Using satellite images and on-the-ground observations at 25 forest plots across the U.S. territory, researchers mapped the devastation wrought by the two storms. An estimated 10.44 million metric tons, or about 23 percent, of Puerto Rico’s total forest biomass was destroyed — but the degree of damage varied by location, researchers report online March 9 in Scientific Reports. Comparing the fraction...