Like big bones planted within the earth, clusters of tree trunks, stripped clear of bark, are showing alongside the Chesapeake Bay on the USA’ mid-Atlantic coast. They’re ghost forests: the haunting stays of what had been as soon as stands of cedar and pine. Because the late nineteenth century, an ever-widening swath of those timber have died alongside the shore. They usually received’t be rising again.
These arboreal graveyards are exhibiting up in locations the place the land slopes gently into the ocean and the place salty water more and more encroaches. Alongside the USA’ East Coast, in pockets of the West Coast, and elsewhere, saltier soils have killed a whole lot of hundreds of acres of timber, forsaking woody skeletons usually surrounded by marsh.
What occurs subsequent? That relies upon. As these useless forests transition, some will turn out to be marshes that preserve very important ecosystem providers, similar to buffering in opposition to storms and storing carbon. Others could turn out to be house to invasive vegetation or help no flora in any respect—and the ecosystem providers might be misplaced. Researchers are working to grasp how this rising shift towards marshes and ghost forests will, on steadiness, have an effect on coastal ecosystems.
Lots of the ghost forests are a consequence of sea stage rise, says coastal ecologist Keryn Gedan of George Washington College in Washington, DC, coauthor of an article on the salinization of coastal ecosystems within the 2025 Annual Assessment of Marine Science. Rising sea ranges can deliver extra intense storm surges that flood saltwater excessive of soil. Drought and sea stage rise can shift the groundwater desk alongside the coast, permitting saltwater to journey farther inland, beneath the forest ground. Bushes, disadvantaged of contemporary water, are burdened as salt accumulates.
But the transition from residing forest to marsh isn’t essentially a tragedy, Gedan says. Marshes are essential options of coastal ecosystems, too. And the shift from forest to marsh has occurred all through durations of sea stage rise up to now, says Marcelo Ardón, an ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist at North Carolina State College in Raleigh.
“You’ll consider these forests and marshes form of dancing collectively up and down the coast,” he says.
Marshes present many ecosystem advantages. They’re habitats for birds and crustaceans, similar to salt marsh sparrows, marsh wrens, crabs, and mussels. They’re additionally a distinct segment for native salt-tolerant vegetation, like rushes and sure grasses, which give meals and shelter for animals.
