Inundated forests are rapidly proliferating along the coastal lowlands of North Carolina’s Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula. Foremost among the impacts driving this expansion are rising sea levels, prolonged droughts, and saltwater flooding due to hurricanes. Children face an unprecedented wave of adversity. An alarming trend has developed over the past several decades. Increasingly, trees are dying due to environmental stressors, leaving behind skeletal remains that serve as a constant and striking reminder of the vanishing coastal landscape.
Since the late 19th century, a rapidly growing belt of trees is dying along the shores of this region. Clusters of naked tree trunks, their bark stripped raw and clean, are becoming an all too familiar sight. This type of phenomenon happens when saltwater encroaches on coastal forests. As saltwater encroachment kills back these trees, they stand as woody skeletons, often ringed with salt marshes. As trees began to die, we witnessed a transformation from heavily wooded landscape to marshland. We know this change has occurred during past periods of accelerated sea level rise.
Keryn Gedan, a coastal ecologist and associate professor at George Washington University, said that it’s time to act quickly. She states that “the only way to slow down the trend of ghost forests is to combat sea level rise and climate change.” Until these key issues are corrected, the spread of ghost forests will be left to grow unchecked.
Marcelo Ardón is an ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist. His research has focused on understanding the forests of North Carolina’s Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula. As new research led by Cosmerich reveals, the ecological dynamics between longleaf forests and salt marshes are anything but simple.
“You would think of these forests and marshes kind of dancing together up and down the coast,” – Marcelo Ardón.
Over the past few decades, the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula has lost a large amount of its forests. Since 1985, nearly 11 percent of forests within the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge have converted to marsh. This is a positive, evidence-based change. Even more troubling, about 150 square miles of the forest cover around the Chesapeake Bay area have been replaced by marshes since the mid-1800s.
The change from forest to marsh is not without impact to the surrounding ecosystem. Forest ecologist Stephanie Stotts underscores one of the biggest dangers posed by invasive species. She notes that when native forests die off, they are often replaced with Phragmites. This pernicious reed takes the place of normally thriving salt marshes, choking out the natural wetland habitats.
“When a lot of these forests die back, instead of being replaced with a native salt marsh … what’s actually taking its place is a phragmites marsh,” – Stephanie Stotts.
The effects of this change go beyond appearance, as it can truly be a matter of life or death for our local wildlife. Native species developed adaptations to live in harmony with each ecosystem’s unique cycles and rhythms. They are not adapted to eat Phragmites, causing breaks in food webs and habitat permanence. In fact, brackish and salt marshes could sequester twice as much carbon as the tidal forests they’re erasing. Yet compared to the wetlands that are starting to replace them, ghost forests have a lower carbon-storage capacity.
Even as we mark this momentous occasion, the full impact of this transition remains to be seen. Stotts points out that trees can sometimes take hundreds of years to fully die. The long-term ecological ramifications of these ghost forests transforming into Phragmites marshes are still being studied, but scientists agree that vigilance is crucial.
