As sea levels rise and storms become more intense, scientists are racing to study the rapid loss of trees and marshland along the Outer Banks.
"Ghost forests" are found throughout the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge near Manns Harbor, N.C. The salt water of the rising sea pollutes the freshwater that trees rely on, poisoning and slowly killing them. ALLIGATOR RIVER NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, N.C. — As the first light of day flickers across the Croatan Sound, Scott Lanier surveys the gray, barren tree trunks that stand in every direction, like massive gravestones marking the once-vibrant landscape.
Few examples of climate change are as unmistakable and arresting as the “ghost forests” proliferating along parts of the East Coast — and particularly throughout the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula of North Carolina. Persistently wet conditions can weaken existing trees. And episodes of saltwater intrusion can push already stressed forests to the breaking point, poisoning the freshwater on which they depend and hastening the death of trees not only at the water’s edge, but in some cases far inland. The result are expanses of dead or dying trees, known as “snags,” that stand as grim monuments to a shifting ecosystem.
And they worry about what will come of the massive stores of carbon these landscapes hold, huge amounts of which could be released back into the atmosphere as forests die and the land retreats — a shift that could further complicate efforts to slow the warming of the planet. To help answer that last question, Ury and other researchers turned to Google Earth, where they examined visible changes over the past 35 years to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge., they found that despite its protected status nearly a third of the refuge — or more than 47,000 acres — had transformed from forest habitat to shrub land or marsh over that period. Nearly 3,000 more acres were “lost to the sea.
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