Like large bones planted within the earth, clusters of tree trunks, stripped clear of bark, are showing alongside the Chesapeake Bay on the US’ mid-Atlantic coast. They’re ghost forests: the haunting stays of what have 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 gained’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 US’ East Coast, in pockets of the West Coast, and elsewhere, saltier soils have killed a whole bunch of hundreds of acres of timber, abandoning woody skeletons usually surrounded by marsh.
What occurs subsequent? That relies upon. As these useless forests transition, some will develop into marshes that preserve important ecosystem providers, akin to buffering in opposition to storms and storing carbon. Others could develop into house to invasive vegetation or assist no flowers in any respect—and the ecosystem providers might be misplaced. Researchers are working to know how this rising shift towards marshes and ghost forests will, on stability, 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 Evaluate 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 flooring. Timber, disadvantaged of recent water, are careworn as salt accumulates.
But the transition from residing forest to marsh isn’t essentially a tragedy, Gedan says. Marshes are necessary options of coastal ecosystems, too. And the shift from forest to marsh has occurred all through durations of sea stage rise prior to now, says Marcelo Ardón, an ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist at North Carolina State College in Raleigh.
“You’ll consider these forests and marshes type of dancing collectively up and down the coast,” he says.
Marshes present many ecosystem advantages. They’re habitats for birds and crustaceans, akin 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 offer meals and shelter for animals.
