For instance, he said, a number of landowners in the area lost up to 10 percent of their trees. But is that necessarily a negative?<\/p>\n
![\"Close](\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2024\/10\/100924_Hydrology-Class_03-768x512.jpg\")
Hydrology class students measure water levels at Little Creek to document the effect of Hurricane Helene on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. Photo by Nathan Gray, Furman University<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cOne could argue that it\u2019s a good thing if it\u2019s an overgrown, poorly-managed forest,\u201d he said. \u201cI was talking to a timber manager \u2026 about how when he takes out a 10-acre block of timber, birds respond positively. They need it to find the right nesting habitats.\u201d<\/p>\n
Downed trees also mean that more sunlight gets through to the forest floor, allowing new plants to grow, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201c(When that happens,) you\u2019ll see something new within 6 months. In 5 years, you can\u2019t recognize it,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat I don\u2019t know \u2026 is if Helene had a negative impact on forest health across the state, did it negatively impact the bird populations I study in any meaningful way?\u201d<\/p>\n
Because he wasn\u2019t collecting data before the hurricane, Quinn says it\u2019s hard to gauge the impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we are going to understand the effects of these sorts of events on ecosystems,\u201d he said, \u201cwe can\u2019t just do responsive science after the fact.\u201d<\/p>\n
But his project to monitor bird communities in forest ecosystems in South Carolina can\u2019t proceed without outside funding, which continues to be uncertain amidst federal budget cuts, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say broadly that if the frequency of those sorts of events increases, we\u2019d need proactive forest and tree management to make sure ecosystems are resilient,\u201d he said. \u201cThat takes time and investment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The impact of flooding on local plant species is also worthy of study, said Ashley Morris, professor of biology and curator of the Ives Herbarium.<\/p>\n
The bunched arrowhead<\/strong><\/p>\n One federally endangered species called the bunched arrowhead, for example, is only known to grow in Greenville County and Henderson County, North Carolina, she said.<\/p>\n The plant is thought to be easily dispersed by water to re-establish itself in a new location, she said, so scientists speculate that flooding has the potential to expand their territory.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem of such movement might be that when flooding recedes, the landing spot \u2026 may not be appropriate for growth, and you could envision a situation where a colony is either largely disrupted or even lost to a flood event,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n After the storm, Morris said Furman\u2019s colony of bunched arrowhead was just where she expected it to be.<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t know how long the site was inundated, but it was still wet in the surrounding area, and that was three weeks after Helene,\u201d she said, adding that a contact in North Carolina found colonies there to be intact as well.<\/p>\n Morris said biologists want to understand how flooding affected the number of plants, their genetic makeup and flowering ability.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is quite possible that the species has persisted in these environments long enough to have adapted to intermittent, but significant, flooding such as that experienced with Helene,\u201d she said. \u201cWe just won’t know until we follow up on the next few growing seasons.\u201d<\/p>\n Rivers and trees<\/strong><\/p>\n Gustavo Coelho, assistant professor of water resources in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Sustainability Sciences, researches flooding risks and is mapping Helene\u2019s flooding to better forecast the timing and location of future deluges.<\/p>\n Hydrology class students, from left, Katie Balog \u201926, Claire Perry \u201926 and William King \u201926, measure levels of Little Creek to document the effects of Hurricane Helene on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. Photo by Nathan Gray, Furman University<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cWe saw the flooding where you\u2019d expect to see it, but also \u2026 much wider,\u201d he said. \u201cUnity Park, for example, saw much more flooding than expected.\u201d<\/p>\n One result, he said, was that the bridge at the park suffered structural damage because of the high waters.<\/p>\n Ecologically, he said, the floodwaters carried sediment from the banks of the Reedy River downstream, where it could impact water quality.<\/p>\n But one of Helene\u2019s most significant impacts was on trees, he said, causing many to fall and leaving others compromised and in need of removal.<\/p>\n \u201cWe received a lot of rain – 8 inches of rain. And we had a lot of rain in the days before Helene \u2026 which resulted in the saturation of the soil, and made the trees much more vulnerable to falling during strong winds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Coelho said, the buffer zones along the river showed resilience and grasses should be back by summer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The historic storm affected vulnerable flora, fauna and rivers, and its full impact is still unknown. Furman biologists discuss the opportunities to learn from the hurricane. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":38004,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-earth-environmental-and-sustainability-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38003"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38013,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38003\/revisions\/38013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2024\/10\/100924_Hydrology-Class_07-768x512.jpg\")