Louis G. Woodhams

Sep 13, 2023 | pnas.org | Amy McDermott |Louis G. Woodhams |Jingxuan Guo |David Schuftan

About 100 miles from the nation’s capital, near Taylor’s Island and Fishing Creek on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, hundreds of acres of dead trees stand upright, like toothpicks piercing the sky. They are among the mid-Atlantic’s largest “ghost forests,” woodlands rapidly converted to marsh because of sea-level rise. Image (pnas.2314607120fig01.tif) is missing or otherwise invalid.Loblolly pine trees drown en masse at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.