Quantification and identification of lightning damage in tropical forests

Area of Science:

• Forest Ecology
• Atmospheric Science
• Remote Sensing

Background:

• Accurate tree mortality data is vital for forest models and carbon cycle estimations.
• Identifying lightning as a cause of tree death is challenging and often imprecise.
• Lightning's ecological impact is poorly understood due to difficulties in detection and post-hoc analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and test a real-time electronic sensor/camera system for locating and characterizing lightning strikes in forest canopies.
• To establish a reliable protocol for identifying lightning-induced tree damage in tropical forests.
• To facilitate comparative research on lightning's ecological effects across diverse forest types.

Main Methods:

• A combined electronic sensor and camera system was deployed on towers for real-time monitoring of forest canopies.
• Continuous video recordings analyzed to pinpoint lightning strike locations.
• Field surveys correlated with detected strike locations to develop identification protocols for lightning damage.

Main Results:

• The system successfully recorded and located 18 lightning strikes over a 3-year period in Panama.
• A protocol was developed to identify inconspicuous lightning damage, including localized branch mortality, liana/sapling mortality, and scorched epiphytes.
• Typical temperate tree lightning scars were not observed in this tropical forest study.

Conclusions:

• The developed lightning detection system can be implemented in various forest types using existing communication towers.
• This technology offers a significant opportunity for comparative research on lightning's ecological impacts.
• Understanding lightning's role is increasingly important due to projected increases in lightning frequency with climate change.