ENVIRONMENT<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n On a brisk December day,<\/strong> David Stahle stands atop a ladder leaning against a bald cypress tree as wide as he is tall. Like a woodsy Doctor Who dropped into this southern swamp with a sonic screwdriver, Stahle begins slowly boring through time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first inch takes him back to before the First World War, the second to the birth of the United States. Within five inches, Stahle, a dendrochronologist at the University of Arkansas, has reached Columbus\u2019s voyage to the New World. By the time he\u2019s finished extracting the pencil-thin core, Stahle has enough rings to estimate that the gnarled cypress sprang from its sodden bed as the first Crusaders were marching toward Jerusalem about a thousand years ago. But it\u2019s the half-inch sliver close to the bark, from around 1900 to 1935, that Stahle points out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the end of that period, roughly 90 percent of the ancient bald cypresses in the U.S. had been cut, Stahle says. \u201cThere\u2019s less than a tenth of one percent of the original bottomland cypress swamp left\u201d in the country. \u201cThat\u2019s why this place is something special.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Left<\/strong>: Tree ring expert David Stahle cores a cypress in South Carolina\u2019s Congaree National Park. Bald cypress tree rings provide one of the strongest climate records in science, showing wet and dry years for more than two millennia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right<\/strong>: A core from a Black River cypress reveals thick and thin rings that correlate precisely with wet and dry periods over centuries. The three holes on the far right mark the ring that corresponds to A.D. 500.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis place\u201d<\/strong> is an overlooked patch along North Carolina\u2019s Black River that contains the oldest known trees east of the Rockies. In fact, the bald cypress is the fifth oldest known sexually reproducing tree species on the planet. The tree Stahle has just cored is barely middle-age. One cypress he discovered here in 2017 dates to at least 605 B.C., not long after Homer regaled the Greeks with the adventures of Odysseus. That makes it over 2,600 years old, and Stahle has found several others of similar vintage nearby. The data from their cores and from other bald cypresses in the Southeast form one of the longest and most accurate records of soil moisture in science. Decades-long droughts, as well as wet periods known as pluvials, are clearly written in their rings down to the exact year. These include a drought that may have doomed England\u2019s first foothold in the New World, Sir Walter Raleigh\u2019s famous Lost Colony, in 1587, and a second one in the 16th century that was even worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe 20th century is not representative of the extremes those trees have endured,\u201d says Stahle, who has cored ancient trees all over the world. A 16th-century megadrought \u201cextended from Mexico to Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and lasted almost 40 years. We haven\u2019t seen anything like that in the modern era.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While these ancient trees provide a window on our climate past, their siblings closer to the coast are teaching us an equally important lesson about our climate future. Even though bald cypresses are among the most resilient trees on Earth\u2014able to withstand some of the worst conditions nature can muster\u2014cypress forests are now dying in droves along the coastline from Delaware to Texas, leaving bone white skeletons in their wake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Left<\/strong>: Matthew Gibson, curator of natural history at the Charleston Museum, rolls out a display of what were once signature avian species of the southern swamp. \u201cThese are some of the earliest birds in our collection,\u201d he says. \u201cThe ivory bill [at right] and Carolina parakeet [at le…Read More<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right<\/strong>: Skeletal cypresses stalk a saltwater marsh that is creeping up the Sampit River in South Carolina, a growing trend along the East Coast as seas rise. \u00a0Scientists say the United States could lose all of its coastal forested wetlands by 2100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These ghost forests<\/strong> are perhaps the clearest signal we have of the inexorable rising tide that is pushing salt water deep into once freshwater ecosystems. Although bald cypresses are more salt tolerant than the ashes, oaks, and other species that share their forested wetland home, they can\u2019t survive long with more than two parts per thousand (ppt) salt in their water. The Atlantic Ocean can exceed 35 ppt, and the level of the ocean is rising faster along the eastern seaboard than almost anywhere else on the planet. Sea level in nearby Wilmington, North Carolina\u2019s largest port, has risen about 12 inches since 1950 and is projected to rise at least another foot by 2050. The Black River trees aren\u2019t currently threatened by salt water; the river remains a quintessential blackwater stream. But farther downstream in the Lower Cape Fear watershed, at least 800 acres of forested wetland have turned into salt marsh since the 1950s as the water has become more brackish, according to recent research from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Once annual average salinity hits the 2 ppt mark, the conversion from forest to marsh becomes inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cape Fear\u2019s ghost forests, which can be seen from area bridges, are a microcosm of a much larger trend. A recent study by researchers at the University of Virginia and Duke University using satellite imagery found that the Gulf Coast and Atlantic coastal plain lost more than 5,000 square miles, or 8 percent, of forested coastal wetlands between 1996 and 2016. That\u2019s a Connecticut-size swath of forest that is now mostly salt marsh and scrub. And almost 270 square miles continue to disappear each year\u2014more than triple the loss rate of global mangroves, long considered one of the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. The researchers concluded that at that pace, barring widespread protection or restoration efforts, we could lose all our coastal forested wetlands before the century\u2019s end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Left<\/strong>: Researchers don\u2019t know exactly why cypresses grow their famous \u201cknees,\u201d woody structures at their bases. But this one provides a perch for a common snapping turtle in Florida\u2019s Suwannee River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right<\/strong>: Bald cypress trees can grow 150 feet tall and, like trees in the Amazon rainforest, can create entirely new aerial ecosystems far above the swamp floor. Yellow helmet orchids, one of 13 species of threatened or endangered Florida orchids found in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, bloom amid ferns atop a tall bald cypress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bald cypress swamps<\/strong> were North America\u2019s Amazon 120 years ago, covering an estimated 40 million acres of the serpentine forested wetlands of the South. They were home to magnificent ivory-billed woodpeckers, delicate Bachman\u2019s warblers, and swarms of Carolina parakeets, not to mention a plethora of aquatic species. But protecting swamps has long been a hard sell. In fact, they are perhaps the only ecosystem that has been specifically targeted for destruction by the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Swamp Land Act of 1850, and another like it, gave unclaimed federal wetlands to several southern states, requiring that the proceeds from land sales be used to drain them. None other than the great orator Daniel Webster summed up the general sentiment in 1851: \u201c[N]othing beautiful or useful grows in it; the traveler through it breathes miasma, and treads among all things unwholesome and loathsome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike their close cousins the redwoods and giant sequoias, cypresses had no organization like the Save the Redwoods League to lobby for their protection. No Ansel Adams\u2013worthy vistas to show the nation what was at stake. As soon as loggers developed cable logging, steam-powered skidders, and other technologies that enabled them to reach deep into the swamps, they set upon them like beavers, turning acres of old-growth cypresses into siding, shingles, even banana crates, until only the most isolated pockets of the ancient trees remained. The Carolina parakeets, ivory bills, and Bachman\u2019s warblers eventually vanished as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a cool,<\/strong> clear autumn day with no miasma in sight, National Geographic Explorer Mac Stone, Stahle, and local guide Charles Robbins launch their kayaks into the Black River\u2019s labyrinth of channels, flowing with water the color of fine bourbon. Their goal is to visit the 2,000-year-old trees Stahle discovered in 2017, and to find and core three more denizens that Stone had spotted during an aerial survey of the area, known locally as the Three Sisters Swamp. The stillness of the swamp is palpable, broken only by paddle drips and the heart-stopping flush of brightly colored wood ducks. Without Robbins\u2019s local knowledge, getting lost would be almost instantaneous. Robbins has lived in Wilmington since the 1980s and has seen the ghost forests creeping up the Cape Fear River, hammered by a trifecta of sea-level rise, dredging of the ship channel, and frequent hurricanes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey all got beat to hell during Bertha and Fran,\u201d Robbins says, referring to the two hurricanes that scored direct hits on the Cape Fear region in 1996, causing major flooding and billions of dollars in damages. \u201cMany tops were broken off, and they were coated with salt spray. They just started to decline.\u201d The water around the Three Sisters is not salty, he says, but it gets hit from heavy nutrient loads upstream in Sampson and Duplin Counties, which have the highest density of hogs in the nation and untold numbers of chicken and turkey farms. Nearly all the waste from millions of hogs, chickens, and turkeys is spread on fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mature cypress forests are incredibly good at cleaning up water\u2014some have even been used to treat municipal sewage in Louisiana. But such high levels of nutrients invite alligator weed, an exotic species, to settle in, and it can outcompete young cypress seedlings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n En route to<\/strong> Stone\u2019s trees, the boats are eventually blocked by a phalanx of cypress knees, some more than 10 feet tall, so the group abandons the kayaks and sloshes through the boot-sucking muck to the rough GPS location on Stone\u2019s map. One key to the oldest trees\u2019 survival, Stahle believes, is that they have a certain \u201cgnarl factor\u201d that makes them worthless as lumber. The trees they find are no exception. They sport massively swollen and fluted bases festooned with burls the size of kitchen tables. The first tree\u2019s top is split and ragged, torn off by some punishing storm and then regrown willy-nilly. The second has a trunk that divides into two 50 feet up, then spirals together like giant flamingos. The last has a hollow that once housed a black bear big enough to scrape its mark seven feet off the ground. (Eastern North Carolina has some of the largest black bears in the world.) Though he can\u2019t core the hollow tree, Stahle estimates it is likely as old as the other two, which have lived at least a thousand years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s the thing about old trees,\u201d says Julie Moore, a retired biologist from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who pointed Stahle to the Black River in the early 1980s when she worked for the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program. \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t have lived this long if they couldn\u2019t take it. Species that have been with us a long time have to adapt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of those adaptations could prove invaluable to humans in a hotter, drier, and stormier world. One study found that even young cypress trees can withstand months of flooding more than 30 feet deep, while their trunks, their knees, and the swampy soils around their roots absorb stormwater and carbon like a sponge. Stahle has shown they can survive decades-long droughts, and others have determined that cypresses can contribute to groundwater recharge and even filter some contaminants. Their high salt tolerance often makes them the last of the ghost forest trees to go. But it\u2019s an uncanny ability to survive the most powerful storms on the planet that makes them truly unique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Left<\/strong>: A wreath of resurrection ferns (Pleopeltis polypodioides)<\/em> provides a window into Old Florida\u2014a virgin bald cypress stand that once covered much of the state. A common accessory to bald cypress in southeastern swamps, the ferns earned their common name because of\u202ftheir ability to lose over 75 percent of their water during a drought and then rehydrate back to life during the next rain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right<\/strong>: Scientists thought the giant sphinx moth was the sole pollinator of the rare ghost orchid, until other moths were caught in the act by camera traps in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n William Conner<\/strong> interviewed for a research job at Clemson University\u2019s Belle W. Baruch Institute of Coastal Ecology and Forest Science in Georgetown, South Carolina, two weeks after Hurricane Hugo blasted the state in 1989. The Category 4 storm came ashore with winds of nearly 140 miles an hour, damaging some 4.4 million acres of forest and destroying 6.7 billion board feet of sawtimber\u2014enough to build about 660,000 homes. That would have housed almost the entire state of West Virginia at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen I drove through Francis Marion National Forest, all the pines were flattened to the ground,\u201d says Conner, now professor emeritus at the institute. \u201cAll the cypress along the streams were still standing. They are incredibly wind-fast, with their buttresses and knees and intertwined root systems. I\u2019ve only seen two trees blown over in my career, and both were isolated by themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That makes them particularly good for restoration projects in places like Louisiana, which once may have had the greatest cypress forests on the continent. Hurricane Katrina was able to flood 80 percent of greater New Orleans in no small part because the city was built on old cypress swamps that were logged and drained, and it eventually sank many feet below sea level. But with several freshwater diversions now in place and the closing of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet shipping channel, which was a direct conduit for salt water from the Gulf of Mexico into the Lake Pontchartrain Basin, conservation groups have been steadily planting cypresses to restore the region\u2019s lost hurricane buffers, among other benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Left<\/strong>: A nine-banded armadillo digs for grubs under a fallen tree in the Audubon Society\u2019s 18,000-acre Francis Beidler Forest in South Carolina. It is the largest remaining tract of old-growth cypress and tupelo forest in the United States. Researchers believe increasingly warmer winters have made the U.S. something of a promised land for the armored cousin of the anteater, once only found from Mexico south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right<\/strong>: Shy, secretive, and extremely rare, a Florida panther prowls the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary underbrush. It\u2019s a member of the last remaining native subspecies of pumas surviving in the wild in the eastern United States. Limited largely to the Everglades region\u2014less than 5 percent of their historic range\u2014only an estimated 10 panthers remained when the species was listed as endangered in 1967. Thanks to intensive conservation efforts and the introduction of eight panther females from Texas in the 1990s to improve genetic diversity, the population has grown to an estimated 130 to 230.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Pontchartrain Conservancy has planted about 92,000 trees since 2010. \u201cWe\u2019ve been getting anywhere from 65 to 98 percent survival rate depending on the site,\u201d says Michael Hopkins, who runs the conservancy\u2019s planting program. \u201cSome of the trees are now 30 to 40 feet tall. When they become mature adults, they can be there for centuries, as long as there is enough fresh water.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the shadows lengthen<\/strong> on the Black River, Stahle, Robbins, and Stone paddle back toward the Three Sisters grove to set up camp on a sandbar where a copse of ancient cypresses blots out the stars. After Stahle found the first Roman-era trees in the mid-\u201980s, the Nature Conservancy began buying land and conservation easements around the grove. It now owns some 17,000 acres along the Black, including the area around the oldest trees. Stahle doesn\u2019t think that\u2019s enough. A proposal to create a Black River state park fizzled in 2017 after some local residents expressed concern about the effects an influx of visitors might have on the old trees\u2014and the quiet, rural community\u2014even though a statewide survey conducted that year found strong support for state protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey are at two meters of elevation, near the coast, so they are threatened [by sea-level rise],\u201d Stahle says. \u201cAt that level we\u2019ll be losing cities, and we can\u2019t allow that to happen. But even the small remnant old-growth forests can be the core area of a broader plan of ecosystem restoration. I\u2019d like to see it protected as a national preserve or monument.\u201d He cites the creation of South Carolina\u2019s Congaree National Park as an example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Earth\u2019s oldest trees stands a hundred feet away, as it has throughout the ravages of the past 2,600 years. Its busted top is sprinkled with resurrection ferns, so named, Stahle says, because they can lose nearly all the water in their tissues during drought, turn gray as death, then spring back to life, good as new, at the first rain. They seem a fitting accessory for this ancient member of a species long known as \u201cthe wood everlasting,\u201d which with care and conservation could help us adapt to a warmer, stormier world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joel K. Bourne, Jr.<\/strong>, a regular contributor to National Geographic<\/em>, is an award-winning writer on global environmental issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mac Stone<\/strong><\/a> uses his photos to help his organization, Naturaland Trust, purchase and protect thousands of acres of wilderness for the public. Learn more at www.macstonephoto.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The nonprofit National Geographic Society<\/a>, working to conserve Earth\u2019s resources, helped fund this article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Three](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/8e9ac043-bf28-4e57-9a83-a3f31e8a64ab\/_L0A2952.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
![\"Man](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/0249e845-b446-4fe2-a07b-86fa904274f0\/MacStone_230520_4110.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Rings](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/ae8486fc-9a73-4c84-b090-ef0c36c0dee9\/MM9795_220323_08411.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/interactives.natgeofe.com\/high-touch\/ngm-2309-ghost-forest\/builds\/main\/img\/ngm-2309-ghost-forest_primary_ai2html-small_or_tablet.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Aerial](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/2bd708c2-7806-4bdd-8d6f-fbd40a960438\/MM9795_210916_03744.jpg?w=2560&h=1708\")
![\"Man](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/c3af8d73-a96f-4183-bcf9-0aa9f0359773\/MM9795_211206_04687.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Dear](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/e4db13fa-3fba-4815-8a4d-2b7527358bb3\/_25A8425.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/interactives.natgeofe.com\/high-touch\/ngm-2309-ghost-forest-transition\/builds\/main\/img\/ngm-2309-ghost-forest-transition_primary_ai2html-small_or_tablet.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Underwater](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/922c707c-52a4-421f-b72c-48f96a16619b\/_25A0661.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Orchids](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/1569e880-249a-4de1-896e-85f27275031e\/MacStone_180804_5442.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Snake](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/e0a3a842-7d07-42af-9ff8-a12f06993611\/untitled-0735.jpg?w=2560&h=1706\")
![\"Bear](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/c1654208-28d3-48a6-8422-21857c8c4b36\/NGS58026S19_190730_15021.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
![\"Portrait](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/be1622cd-a377-40e8-97ae-9c6edef55c13\/MM9795_210917_04217.jpg?w=1272&h=2254\")
Using a drone to capture the length of the tree, Mac Stone created a composite of 12 images.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Tree](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/681c186f-6d49-40c3-bb52-cfa40580ab52\/_25A4471.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Moth](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/089a3fe9-7497-45c0-a1f4-1bef853be004\/untitled-7153.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Fish](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/13c7d86b-a7e2-4a27-a6eb-a679d127808b\/NGS58026S19_190630_06593.jpg?w=1272&h=1908\")
![\"Ducks](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/9aefa902-db61-4a4e-a423-5d1aa4402827\/NGS58026S19_190907_23219.jpg?w=2520&h=1678\")
![\"Man](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/29f19f44-2a8c-4794-bde0-0bac3a7ca11c\/MM9795_210915_02311.jpg?w=2520&h=1678\")
![\"Armadillo](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/b4be21bb-558b-4adf-bcc1-f4baeb6c0962\/NGS58026S19_191029_33110.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Big](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/26c7ba58-ff7c-4d9e-a91f-3f227926fe53\/NGS58026S19_200418_50688.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/9f5bb47e-bfc0-4505-a026-292b4857145a\/untitled-4197.jpg?w=2520&h=1680\")
![\"Alligator](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/2ec29012-b6e4-4c92-ad13-b19177489c96\/untitled-0471.jpg?w=2560&h=1706\")