Phenomenon was documented on the coast of the US. Once dead, the forest does not live again.
The constant climbing of sea level is aggravating the ecological phenomenon of the appearance of “ghost forests”, or to be more specific, large extensions of dead trees – The proof of the collapse of ancient coastal ecosystems.
The phenomenon has been documented in various regions of the world, note this month, which points to the example of Chesapeake Bay and the Albemarle-Pamelic Peninsula in the United States, where thousands of hectares of cedars, cypresses and oaks disappeared.
But why are the dead trees rose from beyond?
The main cause is the saltwater intrusion in underground aquiferswhich disturbs the soil balance and deprives the roots of freshwater supply. This process of salinization, which is slow but relentlessly, leads to irreversible death of the trees.
And once the forest is dead, its trees do not grow again, the ecologists responsible for the annual study on the salinization of Costal ecosystems this year.
Although formed swamps can bring certain benefits to wildlife shelter, storm damping and carbon storage, they do not always properly replace the original ecosystem. In many cases, it is the speed of change that prevents the transition to a functional swamp and instead arise sterile or dominated land by invasive specieslike the reed (Phragmites australis), that move native vegetation and do not feed the local wildlife.
Satellite images show how these “ghost forests” are multiplying: they see the space as gray and nuts that stand out from the surrounding green.
Michal Garrison/NASA Earth Observatory
In the Albemarle-Pamelic Peninsula, in North Carolina, a combination of sea level climb, droughts and floods caused by saltwater hurricanes expanded ghost forests in recent decades.
In addition, some of these forests stored more carbon than the moist zones that replaced them, according to a 2021, but the impact of this transformation, from life to death, is not yet fully known.
