Harvard scientists blown away by hurricane simulation

Tuesday, March 26, 2019 - 15:50 in Earth & Climate

Nearly 30 years ago, Harvard Forest scientists began a unique, long-running experiment on a 2-acre forest tract using a long steel cable, a winch, and a heavy-duty logging vehicle called a skidder. One by one, they dragged the cable to 279 selected trees, attached it high on the trunk, and then radioed the guy at the skidder, parked outside the tract to avoid disturbing the forest floor, to trigger the winch. And, one by one, the trees came down. When they were done, they had approximated the damage done across New England by the Great Hurricane of 1938, creating an experimental hurricane that affected 50 percent of the large canopy trees, opened the understory to new light, kick-started a decades-long recovery process, and created a nightmare landscape of fallen trunks and crisscrossed branches more easily traversed by a parkour expert than scientists charged with regularly recording the changes to come. By March 2019,...

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