RAPID Collaborative Research: Resilient and resistant urban forests: the role of landscape configuration and socioeconomic legacy in understanding tree response to hurricane

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Hurricane Irma caused severe wind and water damage across Florida. Damage to urban forests was widespread. Many trees were uprooted or lost leaves and limbs. As in previous storms, tree damage from Irma is unlikely to be felt equally across communities. Since urban forests provide many important services, understanding what causes differences in impacts between communities is critical to recovery. Patterns of damage may depend on proximity to buildings and which species were present. Management practices, as well as average household income and age of housing, are also likely to be important. Therefore, the goal of this project is to understand how local ecological, social and economic conditions relate to the severity of damage to urban forests from Hurricane Irma. Irma provides a unique and urgent opportunity to learn how urban forests are affected by hurricanes, allowing communities to better predict where tree loss may be high. This will lead to better preparation and effective recovery plans for future storm events. Presentations and workshops will provide information to urban planners and tree care professionals, helping improve urban forest design, tree risk assessment and storm management efforts. This project will provide an opportunity to directly evaluate urban tree canopy responses to hurricanes, and differences in tree damage related to biophysical and social characteristics. This project will build on existing measurements, utilizing field inventory data obtained in the months prior to the storm in Tampa, Gainesville, and Orange County, Florida. Field plots will be re-visited to obtain post-storm data assessing tree failure. These data will be used in conjunction with remotely sensed data obtained before and after the storm, as well as census data to establish socioeconomic context. This combination of field measurements, census data, and remotely sensed data products will allow inference about relationships between socioeconomic and forest structural factors and tree failure. The findings and predictions will directly address larger-scale questions about how urban forest ecosystems are altered in the face of future disturbance scenarios. This project will also improve estimates of the overall consequences of hurricanes to urban forests, allowing policy makers to make better decisions to manage the ecosystem services of this important resource.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.