The international
Estuarine
Research Federation (ERF) has announced the publication of a special
issue of
its scientific journal, Estuaries and Coasts, focused on environmental
impacts
of hurricanes in coastal areas. Estuaries and Coasts is a bimonthly
scientific
journal dedicated to dissemination of research about ecosystems at the
land-sea
interface. The hurricane special edition was published as the journal's
December 2006 issue. The impetus for the
special issue
was the intense 2004 hurricane season, in which four major hurricanes
made
landfall in Florida within a three-month period, according to Holly
Greening of
the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, one of the guest editors for the special
issue.
"One surprising conclusion that can be drawn from this collection of
research is that natural systems are actually quite resilient in the
face of
these storms. While hurricanes often wreak havoc with human systems and
infrastructure, many of the habitats and organisms studied rebounded
quite well
in the weeks and months following the 2004 storms," said Greening. "This special issue
compiles
research findings and results of long-term monitoring to give us a
chance to
look at these large, anomalous storms in the context of long-term
trends,"
she added. The papers in the journal explore both the individual and
cumulative
effects of storms on coastal environments, animals, and plants, and
examine the
effect of these storms on coastal management. For example, water
quality and
phytoplankton productivity – a measure of the health of the
base of the food
web – were impacted by winds and heavy rainfall, but returned
to normal within
months. One study found that manatees' storm-induced movements away
from their
home ranges were much smaller than expected. Aquatic plants, referred
to as
submerged aquatic vegetation or SAV, had a more variable response to
hurricane-induced
stress, sometimes rebounding and sometimes exhibiting long-term damage. Damage to shoreline
ecosystems
varied as well. Dune erosion due to hurricanes was severe in some
places but
not others. In some parts of coastal "A major research
goal is to
use these unique data sets to develop and test a new hurricane scale
for
predicting the coastal impacts of extreme storms," noted issue
contributor
Abby Sallenger of the These varying
impacts seemed to
depend, at least in part, on the characteristics of the storms
themselves:
direction and speed of approach, point of landfall, and intensity all
made a
difference in the extent of environmental damage. Storms that carried
more
rainfall seemed to do more long-term damage than "hit-and-run" storms
with higher winds. "The research
compiled in
this issue of Estuaries and Coasts
is
an excellent start in understanding the environmental impacts of these
storms," said Greening, "but many questions still need to be
answered. We still need to know how storm frequency and intensity, both
predicted to increase in the coming years, interact to impact coastal
environments and communities. Another outstanding question is the
extent to
which human alteration of the shoreline determines the coast's
resiliency to
storms."
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