Ghost forests are growing as sea levels rise

[Judi Lynn]

As trees choked by saltwater die along low-lying coasts, marshes may move in.

Jude Coleman – Apr 20, 2025 6:05 AM



Assateague Island National Seashore and State Park. Credit: OKRAD via Getty

Like giant bones planted in the earth, clusters of tree trunks, stripped clean of bark, are appearing along the Chesapeake Bay on the United States’ mid-Atlantic coast. They are ghost forests: the haunting remains of what were once stands of cedar and pine. Since the late 19th century, an ever-widening swath of these trees have died along the shore. And they won’t be growing back.

These arboreal graveyards are showing up in places where the land slopes gently into the ocean and where salty water increasingly encroaches. Along the United States’ East Coast, in pockets of the West Coast, and elsewhere, saltier soils have killed hundreds of thousands of acres of trees, leaving behind woody skeletons typically surrounded by marsh.

What happens next? That depends. As these dead forests transition, some will become marshes that maintain vital ecosystem services, such as buffering against storms and storing carbon. Others may become home to invasive plants or support no plant life at all—and the ecosystem services will be lost. Researchers are working to understand how this growing shift toward marshes and ghost forests will, on balance, affect coastal ecosystems.

Many of the ghost forests are a consequence of sea level rise, says coastal ecologist Keryn Gedan of George Washington University in Washington, DC, coauthor of an article on the salinization of coastal ecosystems in the 2025 Annual Review of Marine Science. Rising sea levels can bring more intense storm surges that flood saltwater over the top of soil. Drought and sea level rise can shift the groundwater table along the coast, allowing saltwater to journey farther inland, beneath the forest floor. Trees, deprived of fresh water, are stressed as salt accumulates.

More:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/ghost-forests-are-growing-as-sea-levels-rise/

[modrepub]

1. It's Not Just Forests

Sea-level Rise is Swallowing Farms in Maryland, Delaware and Virginia

A new study reveals the extent of saltwater intrusion on farmland in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia (DelMarVa), and outlines the economic costs to local communities. Across the globe, sea level is rising, and in the mid-Atlantic region, land is also sinking due to large geological shifts caused by climate change. The result is that saltwater intrudes into surface and groundwaters in low-lying areas, making the soils too salty for farming.

Researchers from the University of Maryland, University of Delaware and George Washington University collaborated on the study, which mapped the spread of saltwater intrusion from 2011 to 2017, and found that the area covered by visible salt patches almost doubled, with over 19,000 acres converted to marsh. Potential economic losses from the salt patches totaled over $427,000, with Sussex County, Delaware, experiencing the highest potential losses, estimated at $84,431.

The researchers also estimated potential economic losses of between $39-70 million annually due to the reduced yield in farmland within 200 meters of salt patches.

[Botany]

2. "The ghost forests are the consequence of sea level rise."

100s of thousands of acres are now gone.

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