Like huge bones planted in the earth, clusters of tree trunks, removed tidy of bark, are appearing along the Chesapeake Bay on the United States’ mid-Atlantic coast. They are ghost forests: the haunting stays of what were as soon as stands of cedar and pine. Given that the late 19th century, an ever-widening swath of these trees have actually passed away along the coast. And they will not be growing back.

These arboreal graveyards are appearing in locations where the land slopes carefully into the ocean and where salted water progressively trespasses. Along the United States’ East Coast, in pockets of the West Coast, and in other places, saltier soils have actually eliminated numerous countless acres of trees, leaving woody skeletons normally surrounded by marsh.

What takes place next? That depends. As these dead forests shift, some will end up being marshes that keep crucial community services, such as buffering versus storms and saving carbon. Others might end up being home to intrusive plants or assistance no plant life at all– and the community services will be lost. Scientists are working to comprehend how this growing shift towards marshes and ghost forests will, on balance, impact seaside communities.

A number of the ghost forests are an effect of water level increase, states seaside ecologist Keryn Gedan of George Washington University in Washington, DC, coauthor of a post on the salinization of seaside communities in the 2025 Annual Review of Marine Science. Increasing water level can bring more extreme storm rises that flood saltwater over the top of soil. Dry spell and water level increase can move the groundwater table along the coast, permitting saltwater to journey further inland, below the forest flooring. Trees, denied of fresh water, are stressed out as salt collects.

The shift from living forest to marsh isn’t always a catastrophe, Gedan states. Marshes are necessary functions of seaside communities, too. And the shift from forest to marsh has actually taken place throughout durations of water level increase in the past, states Marcelo Ardón, a community ecologist and biogeochemist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

“You would consider these forests and marshes type of dancing together up and down the coast,” he states.

Marshes offer lots of environment advantages. They are environments for birds and shellfishes, such as salt marsh sparrows, marsh wrens, crabs, and mussels. They are likewise a specific niche for native salt-tolerant plants, like hurries and specific yards, which offer food and shelter for animals.