Base-Hurricane: A new extension for the Landis-II forest landscape model

Abstract Hurricanes in the southeast United States are infrequent disturbances that affect large areas and have a large effect on forest succession. In order to understand and quantify this effect, we added a new module to the LANDIS-II landscape change model. Focusing on the southeast coast of the United States, we simulated stochastic hurricanes for 50 years. For each simulated storm, the new model extension generates the maximum sustained wind speed over the region and uses the resulting parameter surface to compute maximum sustained wind speed for each cohort cell in a raster grid. Mortality is estimated for each species and age cohort in each cell based on the maximum sustained wind speed, altering forest succession. Results indicate that hurricanes reduce average aboveground biomass by > 20% over 50 years on a landscape in Fort Bragg, North Carolina (USA) compared to a scenario without hurricanes and increased uncertainty of projected succession.

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