What’s going on, everybody? I am your Emerald Isle Vacation Home Specialist, Denis Raczkowski, with another article on Emerald Isle, Bogue Banks, the Crystal Coast, and Down East. As always, I appreciate you clicking on this article. Do me a favor, and hit the thumbs up because it always helps, hit the subscribe button, and ring the bell. Today’s article is about a disturbing phenomenon called ghost forests. These ghost forests didn’t exist 50 years ago, and today, they are ubiquitous in Carteret County, especially in the eastern half, which locals call Down East. To understand ghost forests, you need to understand the loblolly or North Carolina pine, a tall evergreen tree with long, thin needles and a dark brown bark that separates into scaly plates as the tree matures. These pines will grow 90 feet tall and live for nearly 300 years. These majestic trees provide critical habitat for wildlife like the bald eagle and shelter less wind-tolerant plants from the constant ocean breeze. The loblolly pines live where the sea meets the land. Years ago, when you drove along Highway 70 east of Beaufort you could see lush stands of loblolly pines in marshes surrounding communities like Bettie, Harkers Island, Smyrna, Gloucester, Sea Level, and Atlantic. Today, when you drive Down East on Highway 70 you see leafless and lifeless trees resembling telephone poles. These spreading stands of dead trees are what’s known as ghost forests.
These ghost forests are forming as fast as ever as rising sea levels, more powerful storms, and droughts push salty coastal marches into dry wooded areas. Three factors play a major role in the growing number of ghost forests, and scientists don’t know how to reverse them. First, even with high-tech satellite imagery, it is difficult to model and predict the spread of salt water and marshes over the complex Down East landscape. Second, even a tiny increase in soil salinity can be deadly to loblolly pines. Third, much of the land DownEast is littered with canals constructed long ago to pump seawater out of marshes to farm this once soggy landscape. Because of rising sea levels, these drainage canals serve the opposite purpose today. Instead of helping agriculture thrive, the canals have become conduits for salty water to go even further inland to poison vegetation and trees.
Then, a perfect storm of hurricanes, erratic weather, and droughts caused ghost forests to expand. Consider 2018, when Hurricane Florence made landfall Down East, a multiyear drought preceded the storm. This drought, combined with the heavy use of freshwater for agriculture, caused seawater to move inland. As saltwater poisoned trees, they became more susceptible to threats like invasive bugs and less resilient to future storms. Penny Hooper, who lives Down East on a tidal creek, noticed loblolly pines dying on her property. She started counting the living ones. The first year, there were 52. The following year, there were 38. Then 20. Then 10. After Hurricane Florence, they were gone.
For travelers along Highway 70, these dying forests are unmistakable. For the locals, these ghost forests are disastrous to the fabric that binds these small communities together. Historically, people here were very oriented to the water. But lawns turning into marshes isn’t normal. The transformation of once-healthy forests into ghost forests also is not normal and is one of a long list of challenges residents of Down East have endured, including devastating storms, the opioid epidemic, and losing their identity as a commercial fishing hub. These challenges are too big for one person or community to deal with alone. Unfortunately, because of the self-reliant temperament of Down East residents, none of the nearly two dozen Down East communities are incorporated. Their only link is a shared fire district.
Because Down East residents can look out at landscapes and waterscapes and know that their ancestors stood in the same spot and looked at the same view, Down East residents tend to see environmental changes, such as ghost forests, stronger storms, and diminished fish stock, as part of a natural cycle of the maritime environment. While expanding ghost forests don't capture the public’s attention like a hurricane or a flash flood, people Down East are adapting to the changes by raising homes, building living shorelines, and planting sea grasses, live oak, and cedar trees that are more resilient to saltwater intrusions than loblolly pines. These live oaks won’t live 275 years, and they won’t provide habitats for bald eagles, but the hope is that they will do something.
If this seawater intrusion was confined only to the eastern half of Carteret County, these ghost forests might not seem so important. But this is not a local issue. Seawater intrusion is raising salt levels in coastal woodlands along the Atlantic Coastal Plain from Maine to Florida, killing trees and creating ghost forests visible from space. As sea levels increase, due in part to global warming, these ghost forests become the ecological canary in the coal mine. There are consequences. Drinking water that contains saltwater raises blood pressure and damages kidneys. Seawater intrusion changes ecosystems and reduces the lifespans of roads, bridges, and other infrastructure. Reducing surface water extraction and groundwater pumping can increase the force pushing against intruding salt water. Maintaining healthy dune systems and living shorelines can hold seawater at bay. Some scientific thought says being proactive is paramount because once fresh water is contaminated, removing the salt is hard without constructing desalination plants. Another scientific strategy is to let nature take its course. Allowing marshes to migrate inland can compensate for losses at the coastline as sea levels rise. Hard to know which strategy is better until we address the elephant in the room: global warming.
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