Global assessment of damage to coastal ecosystem vegetation from tropical storms
This study reports on the first comprehensive global assessment of tropical storm (TS) impacts on coastal ecosystem vegetation along the landfall pathways of major hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons using satellite data of land cover vegetation for the years 2006 to 2012. Wind damage has been shown to reduce live vegetation pools of carbon, accelerate ecosystem respiration fluxes of carbon dioxide and thereby represent a potentially significant positive feedback to terrestrial greenhouse gas emissions.