Forests in the US Southeastern Coastal Plain are subjected to periodic disturbances such as fire, hurricane, ice storm, and drought. For floodplain forests, hurricane and ice storm would become the more important disturbances. We studied old-growth floodplain forests at Beidler Forest, a forest preserve administered by the National Audubon Society near Charleston SC, after the 1989 hurricane and 2014 ice storm. The Beidler Forest consists of three distinct community types along a flood gradient: Ridge-Bottom hardwood, Bottomland hardwood, and cypress-tupelo swamp. The objectives of the study were to quantify and compare the intermediate response after the 1989 hurricane and the 2014 ice storm and to test possible interactions between hurricane and ice storm for the three communities.
Results/Conclusions
The 1989 hurricane caused significantly higher tree mortality (13% vs 5%), but had more uninjured trees (40% vs 28%) when compared to the 2014 ice storm. For the trees that sustained damage, the 2014 ice storm caused only crown damage while the 1989 hurricane resulted in various damage types expected from sustained winds: snapped bole (52%), uprooted (23%), crown damage (20%), and bent bole (5%). This difference in damage type between the two disturbances suggested that the 1989 hurricane would suffer significant future mortality because trees snapped or uprooted would not likely recover. Among the three community types, cypress-tupelo swamp suffered the least tree damage regardless of disturbance type. For the 1989 hurricane, Ridge-Bottom (49%) also suffered less damage than Bottomland hardwoods (64%). Trees that were damaged by the 1989 hurricane but survived to 2013, compared to undamaged trees, were not compounded by additional damage or mortality from the 2014 ice storm likely because those damaged trees had likely recovered after 25 years. We conclude that the 1989 hurricane caused more severe damage than the 2014 ice storm, but cypress-tupelo is the community type most resistant to hurricane and ice storm.