Ghost forests are an increasingly common sight along the eastern coast of the U.S., where once-healthy trees have been replaced by bare trunks. Now, scientists believe these arboreal cemeteries could hold clues on how to build resilience to climate change in coastal habitats and predict which forests are most vulnerable.
At the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), which took place between March 22 and March 26, 2026, a team at the University of Delaware presented research showing the link between stemflow and carbon cycling on the forest floor.
“We’re kind of preaching the gospel, not just to the general community, but our own scientific community,” Yu-Ping Chin, a professor from the university’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, said in a press release.
Read More: Chestnut Blight Has Significantly Altered the Composition of Shenandoah National Park
Rising Numbers Of Ghost Forests
Diagram showing the impact of saltwater on coastal forests.
(Image Credit: Samantha Chittakone, Delphis Levia, and Robyn O’Halloran)
Ghost forests are appearing all along the East Coast, from Maine to South Carolina. A 2025 study published in Nature Sustainability mapped more than 10 million dead trees on the U.S. Atlantic coast. Another study, published in Environmental Research Letters in 2020, reported that as much as 15 percent (167 square kilometers) of unmanaged land in North Carolina had transformed from coastal forest to ghost forest between 2001 and 2014.
Explore All Options“Walking through these coastal forests, surrounded by nature, is beautiful,” Samantha Chittakone, an undergraduate student in environmental engineering at the University of Delaware, who presented the research team’s results at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), said in a press release.
“However, it is disheartening to see the healthy trees becoming less prevalent as you approach the shoreline and the effects of rising sea levels become apparent,” Chittakone added.
This trend has been attributed to an unfortunate combination of warming temperatures, rising sea levels, and the movement of saltwater to freshwater habitats, which drowns and poisons trees.
Changing The Health Of The Forest Floor
The skeletal remains of dead trees may be the most visible sign of a forest undergoing such a transformation, but the researchers explain that important hidden changes occur below ground, specifically in how trees process carbon and nutrients.
Their research looked at the way stemflow (the rainwater that runs down the trunk or branches of a tree) affects groundwater (the water found below the surface of the forest floor), and compared the relationship between the two in dead, healthy, and stressed sweetgum trees inhabiting a coastal forest impacted by sea level rise.
“Stemflow is basically injecting nutrients and really important chemicals into the forest ecosystem so the microbiome there can thrive,” said Chin, who explained the concentration of different nutrients and the bark’s texture can influence the color of the liquid, which ranges from a dark, coffee color to a pale tan reminiscent of weak tea.
The samples collected by Chittakone, Chin, and others showed that stemflow from dead trees was less likely to reach ground level than stemflow from healthy trees. In a press release, Chin compared the dead trees to sponges that absorb the stemflow, preventing the water (and the nutrients and carbon it contains) from reaching the ground. The researchers also noted higher-than-expected sugar concentrations in stemflow collected from trees that were dead or stressed.
“Not only is this changing the health of the trees, but it changes the health of the forest floor,” said Chin.
Chittakone told Discover that stemflow is an underused resource when it comes to measuring a forest’s response to a changing climate and the intrusion of saltwater. Her hope is that their findings can be used to support the conservation and management of coastal forests vulnerable to environmental changes.
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Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- This article references information from a study published in Nature Sustainability: Overlooked and extensive ghost forest formation across the US Atlantic coast
- This article references information from a study published in Environmental Research Letters: Aboveground carbon loss associated with the spread of ghost forests as sea levels rise
- This article references information from Google Earth Engine Apps: Ghost Forests in the US Atlantic Coast
