SGER: Rapid Response to Natural Disturbance: Development of an Empirically-Based, Spatially-Explicit Model of the Effects of Hurricanes on Tropical Forests

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Canham9906713Spatially-explicit forest models have been successfully developed for several temperate forests. Some such models, such as SORTIE, have been successful at capturing several realistic features of forest development and have been widely accepted as realistic. Until now, these types of models have been applied to the complex forests that develop in Tropical habitats to only a very limited extent.Hurricane Georges struck forests on Puerto Rico with devastating effects in September 1998. This storm followed other hurricanes that struck the island during the past 10 years. The devastating effects of Hurricane Georges have one advantage for developing a SORTIE-like model for the Puerto Rico forest. They provide an opportunity to apply the model directly to the development of a tropical forest immediately following its natural disturbance. This project requires a SGER timeline because it will collect the initial field data necessary for the application of the model, data that must be collected immediately following a disturbance in a rapidly developing tropical ecosystem. The model will be used to address a broad suite of hypotheses on the effects of recurrent hurricanes on species diversity, community dynamics, and ecosystem structure and function in tropical forests by testing empirically based prediction on the responses of tropical forests to hurricanes.