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.
U.S. Forest Service researchers believe that Hurricane 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.
Irene made landfall over eastern North Carolina on August 27, 2011, and significant flooding followed. About a year later, Rob Trickel, head of the Forest Health branch of the North Carolina Forest Service, saw something peculiar in eastern North Carolina highlighted on a ForWarn map.
“In September 2012, I was perusing ForWarn and the Forest Disturbance Monitor. Since the Pains Bay Fire on the coastal plain the year before, I made it a point to periodically check out that part of the state on ForWarn maps to see how green up was progressing,” says Trickel. “On that day, I noticed an area of disturbance along the sound just east of the Pains Bay Fire. I thought at first, ‘Did I miss that part of the fire?’ before realizing that this was not fire-related.”
Trickel would soon travel to a meeting on the coast, so he made plans to check out the area in person. Meanwhile, his investigation continued. “I went back and looked through the ForWarn map archives because I knew this place to be a grassy, scrubby area with scattered pond pines, swampbay, and red maple and other hardwoods,” says Trickel. Based on the ForWarn maps, the greenness of the vegetation appeared to have started declining a year earlier, in September of 2011. “When I realized this, I hypothesized that the disturbance was related to saltwater storm surge from Hurricane Irene.”
From the USFS Southern Research Station: https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/compass/2014/08/05/forest-health-experts-eye-hurricane-damage-in-north-carolinas-coastal-forests/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=forest-health-experts-eye-hurricane-damage-in-north-carolinas-coastal-forests