Ghost Forests   Edward Frank
  Jul 11, 2007 21:23 PDT 
ENTS,

Anyone have descriptions of ghost forests to share with us?

Ed Frank



http://www.wordspy.com/words/ghostforest.asp


      ghost forest n. A stand of dead trees, particularly one surrounded by water; a stand of trees submerged in water.
Re: Ghost Forests   Lee E. Frelich
  Jul 12, 2007 08:59 PDT 
Ed:

Sure, lots of them in northern MN. For example along US 2 between Duluth
and Grand Rapids there are several thousand acres of dead black spruce and
tamarack. This often happens in flat wetland terrain as result of building
a road or beaver dams that raise the water table a little on one side and
kill the forest. Trees on the other side where the water table falls
usually grow faster. We also have a lot (probably 10,000+) of black ash
that is dead due to a high-low water table fluctuation.

Lee
RE: Ghost Forests   Zachary Stewart
  Jul 12, 2007 10:00 PDT 

Plenty of acre-sized areas of dead willow, birch, and oak in local
ponds around this part of Alabama, though I suspect it isn't a
natural 'ghost forest'; plenty of road debris, damming of rivers,
pesticides, etc (although beavers are a problem as well).
I've seen some good-sized river birches and oaks
dead in stagnant ponds around here.

-Zac
Re: Ghost Forests   Robert R Bloye
  Jul 12, 2007 19:40 PDT 

Hello, fellow tree-huggers:

     Another slant on "Ghost forests" here in Michigan is the exploration of
forests that have been buried in moving sand dunes. Old spruce forests have
reappeared after 1000's of years of burial.
     And for the adventurous...there is a submerged forest [at about 150
feet depth] east of Detroit. This stand is a drowned remnant of an
interglacial lowland forest.
      Yet another "Ghost forest" lurks on my research site at the Pigeon
River Country State Forest in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.
I have measured an array of white pine stump remnants that cover about three
square miles. They were all harvested in the 1880's and exhibit the DBH and
spatial attributes of a forest now gone for 125 years.
      Also consider the oak stumps that the folks in northern Ireland have
pitched into local bogs for a 1000 years. The dendrochronology folks in
Belfast have reconstructed the oak forest of Ireland from these bog oaks.

       So, forestry at the beach, underwater, and deep in time...

                                     Robert
Re: Ghost Forests   DON BERTOLETTE
   Jul 12, 2007 21:04 PDT 

Ed-
There are remnants of a spruce forest along Turnagain Arm (south of Anchorage AK) that resulted from the unexpectedly high influx of salt water during the 1964 earthquake...some ghost trees still remain forty-some years later...
-DonB