Clusters of dead standing tree trunks are appearing along the Chesapeake Bay on the United States’ mid-Atlantic coast. They are ghost forests: the remains of cedar and pine stands. Since the late 19th century, an ever-widening swath of these trees have died along the shore. And they won’t be growing back. They are showing up in places where the land slopes gently into the ocean and where salty water increasingly encroaches. Along the United States’ East and West Coast saltier soils have killed acres of trees. …As these dead forests transition, some will become marshes that maintain vital ecosystem services, such as buffering against storms and storing carbon. Others may become home to invasive plants or support no plant life at all — and the ecosystem services will be lost. Researchers are working to understand how this growing shift toward marshes and ghost forests will, on balance, affect coastal ecosystems.