Can tropical forests resist or recover from hurricane impacts?

Abstract

The long-term study (35 years) on the functional ecological processes of the tropical deciduous forest of the Chamela region, Jalisco, on the Pacific coast of México, has been a very useful scientific tool for the understanding of the ecosystem processes and their natural variability. It has allowed us to document, for example, the degree of forest disruption in terms of soil loss due to erosion, and the loss of the canopy and tree fall due to hurricanes originating both in the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts. We now know that the Chamela forest has a high capacity to recover from the impact of hurricanes, but such recovery depends on the amount of precipitation occurring after their impact. We have been able to document that the uncertainties in the amount and seasonal distribution of rainfall determine whether and how fast the forest is capable of recovery after disturbance. We propose that there is a need to incorporate such uncertainty in the design of forest conservation, adaptive and management strategies, to reduce the vulnerability of the communities in seasonally dry tropical regions exposed to the impacts of these extreme events.

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