Ghostly Forests on Eastern Shore Have a Story to Tell

The term “ghost forests” might sound like something from a Halloween movie, but these ghosts actually exist along low-lying shores, where rising seas infiltrate coastal forests. Trees in areas along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico are dying due to the increasing salinity of the groundwater, and the landscape is slowly transitioning to salt-tolerant marshland.

University of Virginia environmental scientists, who study this interaction between sea and land and how it affects broader ecosystems, are taking on a new project: they are collaborating with artists on the Eastern Shore to reveal the phenomenon of ghost forests, to showcase their eerie beauty and to raise awareness of our changing coastal environments.