Sinking Land Drives Hidden Flood Risk in One of the World’s Most Populated Regions - SLRPNK
cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/44290823
[https://sopuli.xyz/post/44290823] >
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> > > > Fig. 1. a) Historical hurricane tracks that came within our search range
(250 km of New York City: dashed circle). The categories shown are based on the
Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale (Saffir, 1973, Simpson, 1974). Storm track
color denotes hurricane category at a given location (see key). b) Inset showing
tree-ring site locations for 1. Montauk, New York, 2. Mashomack, New York, and
3. Newport, Rhode Island. c) The scanned sample image (top) compared to the
image that was produced using quantitative wood anatomy methods (bottom). d)
Close up of cell detail for 1977 and 1978 with inset highlighting vessel tylosis
and detail on earlywood and latewood separation within a growth ring. The base
map for panel (a) and (b) was produced on NOAA’s Historical Hurricane Track
interactive mapper: https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/tools/hurricanes.html
[https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/tools/hurricanes.html] > >
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> > > Fig. 2. Left: Residual (RES) tree-ring width chronologies from Montauk,
New York (panel a), Newport, Rhode Island (panel b), and Mashomack, New York
(panel c). Dashed vertical lines denote years of the most significant hurricane
events around New York City (i.e., Category 2 or higher within the search
radius). Right: Superposed Epoch Analysis showing the response of the normalized
tree-ring width chronologies to the hurricane events, with colored uncertainty
envelopes surrounding the black line representing the 5th and 95th percentiles
of the growth response. The dashed and dotted lines refer to the 5th/95th and
1st/99th significance thresholds, respectively, using a random bootstrapping
approach. > > > … > > > Importantly, the coastal oak chronologies do not show a
strong climate signal from 1902 to 1999, except for Mashomack with a weakly
significant and positive current-year signal with May/June precipitation (r =
0.26/0.26; p < 0.05) and SPEI-1 (r = 0.22/0.24, respectively; p < 0.05) (Fig.
S2). Montauk shows a weakly positive correlation with previous year
November/December precipitation (r = 0.23/0.22; p < 0.05) and November SPEI-1
(0.24; p < 0.05). Newport has weakly negative correlations with prior-year
September precipitation (r = -0.27, p < 0.05) and SPEI-1 (r = -0.34, p < 0.05).
> > > This is in contrast to inland tree-ring studies within the region that
show stronger sensitivity to summer precipitation or drought variability
(Levesque et al., 2017; Pederson et al., 2013). While the sheltered nature of
Mashomack may provide an environmental niche more similar to inland forests
allowing for the emergence of a weak summer climate signal, Montauk and Newport,
seem to be insensitive to summer climate variability. Overall, although there
were some significant correlations (p < 0.05) between climate variability from
individual months and RW variability, correlations were weak (r < 0.3), some
occurring in the previous year (t-1), and there were no notable correlation
commonalities shared by the sites. > > > Our results fall in line with prior
research in the region indicating that regional-scale climate variability is not
the strongest limiting factor of radial growth of coastal trees. Rather, other
environmental factors and ocean effects (Pearl et al., 2020; Tucker and Pearl,
2021) may play a more important role in their year-to-year radial growth. These
trees are growing in a highly disturbance-prone region, very close to the sea,
and subject to strong winds and salt spray. Paleotempestological tree-ring
studies from more climate sensitive regions had success isolating a hurricane
signature after removing the climate signal from the tree-ring data (Collins-Key
and Altman, 2021). This filtering was not necessary here given the lack of
strong climate signals across the sites. > > … > > > Our study demonstrates that
ring-width records from oak trees (Quercus spp.) growing at several coastal
sites in New York and Rhode Island, and one beech site (Fagus grandifolia) from
Massachusetts, capture major historical hurricane events over the 19th and 20th
centuries. This is manifested by severely reduced ring width and latewood width,
and for the Montauk site, relatively high lumen area ratio values in the year
following the storm. In combination, this multi-parameter approach could help us
better pin-point hurricane events prior to the observational record,
particularly the strongest storms–Category 3 and larger in the tree-ring record.
> > > Our results also show that wood anatomy from white oak (Quercus alba) from
coastal forests, has strong potential in terms of hurricane detection, providing
a critical first step in developing a protocol for analyzing these forests.
Future studies could benefit from additional parameters (e.g., stable isotopes,
additional anatomical traits), and/or other paleotempestological proxies (e.g.,
sediment cores), to develop a better understanding of historical hurricane
activity across the northeastern United States. > > > > Our findings also
indicate that these forests demonstrate a remarkable capacity for recovery
following large-scale disturbances, such as hurricanes. Unlike studies of
conifers (Tucker et al., 2018; Fernandes et al., 2018), we found that oak and
beech trees from Montauk, Newport, and Naushon Island sites had fully regained
their radial growth by the second growing season after a hurricane, with trees
at Mashomack only slightly lagging this rapid recovery. This suggests a high
tolerance to disturbance for oaks (4 sites) and beech (1 site). Future
investigations require more sites from a variety of tree species to elucidate
differences in hurricane response depending on forest types (e.g. conifers vs
angiosperms). > > > > Despite the resilience of coastal forests to hurricane
impacts, these forests are increasingly at risk from storm damage and surges,
and continued sea-level rise. We would expect that compound events and
stressors, such as sea-level rise, storm surges, and physical damage from
hurricanes, could further alter site conditions beyond the thresholds these
ecosystems can tolerate. Our results show that forest growth is already
negatively correlated with sea-level height anomalies. Given the critical role
these forests play in the sustainability of densely populated communities—by
buffering wind, supporting dune infrastructure, enhancing groundwater recharge,
and sustaining wildlife—greater attention is needed to study and protect
remaining coastal forests. > > link to open access article… > >
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092181812600144X
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092181812600144X]
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