“The ghost forest”. It sounds like the title of a horror film, but it is a dramatic reality that is hitting the American coasts between North Carolina and Massachusetts. Sea levels are rising at three times the global average rate, bringing brackish water that is slowly turning stands of trees into cemeteries.
A silent drama that progresses
For Matthew Kirwan, a coastal ecologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, these ghost forests are the clearest sign of climate change along the US East Coast.
The roots of the trees are literally submerged in salt water that creeps into the ground. The phenomenon is particularly serious in the Chesapeake Bay, where the land is flat and the rising sea transforms forests into cemeteries, advancing by almost 5 meters per year.
The slow and silent erosion of the territory is an ongoing drama, with trees dying one after another, without new ones being able to take their place.
Operation against cemeteries
Kirwan and other researchers are working to preserve at least the swamps surrounding the ghost forests. Swamps, in fact, are ecosystems rich in biodiversity, similar to tropical rainforests, capable of absorbing large quantities of CO2 and improving water quality.
In parallel, the struggle aims to reforest more inland areas, where forests are less likely to turn into tree cemeteries.
Password: adaptation
Even if the forests will never go back to what they used to be, it is possible to resist in order not to lose ground. The positive repercussions of these projects go far beyond individual forests, also involving the surrounding ecosystems.
It will be an unequal fight, dotted with defeats: but only by fighting it (and on multiple fronts) can we give the planet the time and opportunity to repair the damage.
