Hurricane damage and forest carbon stocks: evidence from Louisiana
| Authors: | Jinggang Guo, Jeffrey P. Prestemon, Jesse Henderson |
| Year: | 2026 |
| Type: | Scientific Journal |
| Station: | Southern Research Station |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae988e |
| Source: | Environmental Research Letters |
Abstract
Long-term carbon storage by forests is important for climate mitigation, yet storage durability faces threats from natural disturbances whose causal impacts are not well quantified. We use the staggered timing of two Category 4 hurricanes that struck different regions of Louisiana—Laura in 2020 and Ida in 2021—to estimate the causal effect of severe hurricane damage on forest carbon stocks. Using parish-level data from the USDA forest inventory and analysis program covering all 64 Louisiana parishes over 2017–2024 and a doubly robust difference-in-differences estimator, we find that hurricane damage reduced live biomass carbon by 7%–8%: aboveground live carbon declined 7.3% and belowground live carbon 7.7%, results robust to both cluster-robust and wild cluster bootstrap inference. Total forest carbon—nearly half of which is held in a slow-changing soil pool—declined by 3.5% (95% CI: −6.9% to −0.2%); this aggregate effect is significant under cluster-robust inference but not under the wild cluster bootstrap appropriate for our small number of treated clusters. Effects persisted across the four-year post-treatment period with no evidence of recovery. Live carbon losses were concentrated on private forests (−7.9%, P = 0.022), with no detectable change on public forests (+0.9%, P = 0.892), though this private–public difference is not statistically significant (interaction P = 0.493). We measure changes in carbon stocks rather than net flux to the atmosphere. Because private lands make up 86% of Louisiana’s forestland and underpin most carbon offset programs, the magnitude and persistence of these losses suggest that nature-based climate solutions in hurricane-prone regions face greater hurricane-related risks than current carbon-offset frameworks recognize.