The ongoing environmental impact of Katrina and Rita
This is astonishing:
New satellite imaging has revealed that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita produced the largest single forestry disaster on record in America -- an essentially unreported ecological catastrophe that killed or severely damaged some 320 million trees in Mississippi and Louisiana.
The die-off, caused initially by wind and later by the weeks-long pooling of stagnant water, was so massive that researchers say it will add significantly to the greenhouse gas buildup -- ultimately putting as much carbon from dying vegetation into the air as the rest of the American forest takes out in a year of photosynthesis.
[...]
"This is the worst environmental disaster in the United States since the Exxon Valdez accident . . . and the greatest forest destruction in modern times," said James L. Cummins, executive director of the non-profit environmental group Wildlife Mississippi and a board member of the Mississippi Forestry Commission. "It needs a really broad and aggressive response, and so far that just hasn't happened."
Of course, that last part is no surprise.