Monitoring the Eco-hydrological Impacts of Hurricanes in the Southeast US

Julien Brun, Duke University, julien.brun@duke.edu (Presenter)
Ana Barros, Duke University, barros@duke.edu

Hurricanes cause massive wind and flood damages to natural and built areas at landfall and along the storm terrestrial track. On the other hand, hurricanes provide a significant influx of freshwater resources to surface and subsurface reservoirs during the warm season, which is critical to water resources in the SE US. Here we concentrate on monitoring the impact of hurricanes and tropical storms on vegetation activity along their terrestrial tracks and investigate the underlying physical processes. To characterize and monitor the spatial organization and time of recovery of vegetation disturbance in the aftermath of major hurricanes over the entire southeastern US, a remote sensed framework based on MODIS enhanced vegetation index (EVI) was developed. At the SE scale, this framework was complemented by a water balance approach to estimate the variability in hurricane groundwater recharge capacity spatially and between events. In addition, a hydrology model coupled to a dynamic vegetation model is used to characterize the eco-hydrological processes that govern the space-time patterns of vegetation disturbance recovery at the landscape scale. Special emphasis is placed on elucidating the differences between regional-scale drought-induced vegetation stress and post-storm vegetation stress in the SE using model simulated gross primary production (GPP) fields.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Global Change Impact & Vulnerability   (Tue 11:30 AM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Barros, Ana: Using Satellite Data to Characterize the Role of Tropical Cyclones in the Ecohydrology of the Southeast US ...details

Poster Location ID: 119