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Projected increases in cyclonic storm intensity under a warming climate will have profound effects on many coastal forests, with the potential to increase the dominance of tree species resistant to storms and perpetuate shorter forest structures with lower biomass. Nevertheless, evidence of any selective, long-term effects of hurricane disturbance on forest composition and structure remains scant. Here we employ a novel machine learning framework and high-resolution aerial photos collected over the 115 Km 2 of El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico to map two hurricane-dependent woody species: a highly wind-resistant palm and a pioneer tree species that depends on canopy damage for persisting in the landscape. We use these maps together with LiDAR coverage of the forest to examine the effects of topographic exposure to two 20 th century hurricanes, Hugo (1989) and Georges (1998), on current forest …