Skip Navigation



Forestry Advance Access published online on May 8, 2008
Forestry, doi:10.1093/forestry/cpn020
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by XI, W.
Right arrow Articles by Urban, D. L.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© Institute of Chartered Foresters, 2008. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Wind and Trees Special Issue

Tree damage risk factors associated with large, infrequent wind disturbances of Carolina forests

Weimin XI1,*, Robert K. Peet1, James K. Decoster2 and Dean L. Urban3

1 Department of Biology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 29599-3280, USA
2 Southern Colorado Plateau Inventory and Monitoring Network, National Park Service, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA
3 The Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA

* Corresponding author. E-mail: xi{at}tamu.edu


  Abstract

Past studies of large, infrequent wind disturbances have shown that meteorological, topographic and biological factors interact to generate complex damage patterns, but have left open the extent to which these limited past findings are representative and can be used to predict future damage. We present a multi-scale, comparative analysis to examine how risk factors change over spatial scales and to evaluate the consistency in risk factors associated with three major wind events: a North Carolina Piedmont tornado of 1988, Hurricane Hugo of 1989 and Hurricane Fran of 1996. Our results reveal that the risk factors that best explain variation in damage vary with scale of observation. Tree size and species explain damage variation at the stand scale; topographic, site and stand factors explain damage variation at the landscape scale and wind speed and precipitation explain damage variation at the regional scale. However, it is possible to integrate these factors by incorporating factors from the finer scales into coarser-scale studies. We also found distinct differences in the damage caused by the hurricanes relative to the tornado, and to some extent consistency between hurricanes.

Received 6 August 2007.
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.