HAMPTON ROADS, Va. — They’re called ghost forests, but it’s not because they’re haunted.
These forests are full of dying and dead trees. Something environmental advocates say should be haunting to all of us.
News 3 anchor Pari Cruz traveled by land and by sea to Goodwin Island to show us what growing ghost forests mean for all of us.
These ghost forests can be seen all up and down the east coast.
But they’re bigger and occurring more rapidly here in the Chesapeake Bay which is a hot spot for some of the fastest rise in sea level.
“This little thin edge of dead trees doesn't look like much but through time it adds up,” said Matt Kirwan, an Associate Professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS).
What was once a flourishing forest, now lays in decay.
“That's all marsh that was created by sea level rise used to be forest.”
They’re called ghost forests, dead trees over large areas invaded by rising sea levels.
Kirwan teaches coastal processes at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and has studied ghost forests for two decades.
“It's the saltwater that intrudes into the forest during every abnormally high tide. And that saltwater is encroaching just a little further inland every year and it kills the trees and eventually causes the soils to be too wet and salty and only marsh vegetation can occur then,” said Kirwan.
We took a boat ride over from VIMS to Goodwin Island to check out a nearby patch of skeletal trees.
At a distance they’re haunting, one of the most striking indicators of climate change.
And out here the contrast is clear.
Kirwan says these ghost forests are continuing to grow at accelerated rates, two to five times faster than they were 100 years ago.
“The reason they're occurring faster here is that our rates of sea level rise are faster because our land is also sinking. But coastal Virginia is also really flat,” he said.
“We've lost about 100,000 acres of forests since the late 1800’s.”
Kirwan’s family has been in the area for generations.
“I’ve watched probably between half and three quarters of all the trees that my family owns be killed.”
Making this loss more personal for him.
“I’ve spent so many hours trying to come up with solutions for that, how to prevent that from happening,” he said. “And really, I can't come up with much of a solution to prevent the loss of the trees, that's almost inevitable, unfortunately.”
But he says not all is lost-there are many ecological benefits to the marshes.
From providing habitat for wildlife, to storing carbon in the soil that absorbs large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
They’re very much alive and are a good reminder of nature’s resilience.
“If we're going to lose those trees, let's try to get something back,” said Kirwan. “Let's get marshes to come in where the trees used to be. So that at least even though we're losing the forest, we get something in return. And salt marshes, of course, are well lauded for their ability to enhance our environment.”
