Katrina Destroyed Over 300 Million Trees, Releasing Millions of Tons of Carbon into the Atmosphere

N/A
Press release published November 2007.

More than 320 million large trees were destroyed when Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf Coast region in 2005, releasing some 105 million tons of carbon—almost the same amount as all the forests in the U.S. are able to draw down in a year. Jeremy Fisher, now at Synapse, was part of a team of scientists from Tulane University and the University of New Hampshire that used satellite data and detailed forest surveys to map the footprint of Katrina and estimate the number of trees killed in the storm with unprecedented accuracy.