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Tropical cyclones can physically alter ecosystems, causing immediate and potentially long‐lasting effects on carbon dynamics. In 2018, Hurricane Michael hit the southeastern United States with category 5 winds at landfall and category 2 winds reaching over 100 miles inland, resulting in extensive damage. Longleaf pine woodlands in the path of the hurricane were damaged, but severity varied based on the storm track. We used a combination of eddy covariance measurements, airborne LiDAR, and forest inventory data to determine whether hurricane affects structure, function, and recovery of two longleaf pine woodlands at the ends of an edaphic gradient. We found that the carbon sink potentials in both sites were diminished following the storm, with reductions in net ecosystem exchange (NEE) primarily due to lower rates of photosynthesis, as respiration only increased marginally. The xeric site carbon losses and physiological reductions were smaller following the disturbance, which led to the recovery of ecosystem physiological activity to prestorm rates before that of the mesic site, as indicated by maximum ecosystem CO₂uptake rates. Two years following the hurricane both stands continued to have reduced NEE, which signaled altered function. We expect both locations to recover their lost carbon stocks in ∼10–35 years; however, long‐term studies are needed to examine how longleaf woodlands respond to compounding disturbances, such as drought, fire, or other wind storms, which vary significantly across the ecosystem's range. Additionally, hurricanes are intensifying due to climate change, potentially amplifying the degree to which they will alter this ecosystem in the future.

 

The implications of cumulative land-use decisions and shifting climate on forests, require us to integrate our understanding of ecosystems, markets, policy, and resource management into a social-ecological system. Humans play a central role in macrosystem dynamics, which complicates ecological theories that do not explicitly include human interactions. These dynamics also impact ecological services and related markets, which challenges economic theory. Here, we use two forest macroscale management initiatives to develop a theoretical understanding of how management interacts with ecological functions and services at these scales and how the multiple large-scale management goals work either in consort or conflict with other forest functions and services. We suggest that calling upon theories developed for organismal ecology, ecosystem ecology, and ecological economics adds to our understanding of social-ecological macrosystems. To initiate progress, we propose future research questions to add rigor to macrosystem-scale studies: (1) What are the ecosystem functions that operate at macroscales, their necessary structural components, and how do we observe them? (2) How do systems at one scale respond if altered at another scale? (3) How do we both effectively measure these components and interactions, and communicate that information in a meaningful manner for policy and management across different scales?