Tracking the Rates and Mechanisms of Canopy Damage and Recovery Following Hurricane Maria Using Multitemporal Lidar Data

Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm, snapped and uprooted canopy trees, removed large branches, defoliated vegetation across Puerto Rico. The magnitude of forest damages the rates mechanisms recovery following Maria provide important benchmarks for understanding ecology extreme events. We used airborne Lidar data acquired before (2017) after (2018, 2020) to quantify landscape-scale changes in structure along 439-ha elevational gradient (100–800 m) Luquillo Experimental Forest. Damages from were widespread, with 73% study area losing ≥ 1 m height (mean = −7.1 m). Taller forests at lower elevations suffered more damage than shorter above 600 m. Yet only 13.5% had heights ≤ 2 2018, typical threshold gaps, highlighting importance damaged trees advanced regeneration on post-storm structure. Heterogeneous patterns regrowth recruitment yielded open by 2020. Nearly 45% experienced initial loss > (2017–2018) followed rapid gain (2018–2020), whereas 21.6% losses showed little or no gain, 17.8% exhibited larger ± either period. Canopy layers < 10 tall accounted most increases fractional cover between 2018 2020, gains split evenly growth lateral crown expansion surviving individuals. These findings benchmark gap formation, expansion, closure hurricane highlight diversity ecosystem impacts heterogeneous spatial vertical stratification major disturbance event.