WEST POINT In Sweet Hall marsh, the ghosts tell tales.
Dead, bone-white trunks known as ghost trees say the marsh along the Pamunkey River is changing.
Scientists suspect the trees were exposed to too much water, and possibly salt water, because the sea level -- and hence, the river level -- is rising.
The rising sea is a well-documented effect of global warming. When water warms, it expands. The sea level is rising faster in southeastern Virginia than any other place on the East Coast, in part because the land is also sinking.
In the marsh, there are other signs the rising water is causing changes. For example, duck hunters complained a decade ago that giant cordgrass, the tall plants they used to hide in during winter, was disappearing.
"Instead of being in the middle of a forest of standing vegetation, you're in the middle of a mud flat or open water," said Carl Hershner, a wetlands expert with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Under a big sky -- nothing in sight but the winding Pamunkey, the arrowhead-shaped leaves of marsh plants along the river, and the trees in the distance -- Hershner and other VIMS scientists inspected the site recently from a bouncy, bare-bones boardwalk.
Freshwater marshes such as Sweet Hall are important. Among other things, they are nurseries for young striped bass, shad and herring. And, judging from this 950-acre marsh just west of West Point, they are also beautiful.
In 2007, VIMS researchers turned the marsh into a "sentinel site" for climate change research. In coming years and decades, they hope to document scientifically the changes that people have noticed anecdotally.
On this day, two VIMS scientists placed vertical fiberglass rods through a horizontal aluminum plate and measured the distance to muddy soil.
A marsh can keep up with slowly rising waters. Suspended dirt falls out of the water, and plants take root in it.
But if the water rises too fast -- and that's the fear here -- the marsh will, in effect, drown. The fiberglass measuring rods could help tell that story.
Pollution and storms can also cause changes.
"There are a lot of stressors on the marsh, but sea-level rise is that long-term one we're concerned about," said VIMS scientist William Reay.
Reay directs the National Estuarine Research Reserve in Virginia, an array of wild lands on which scientists conduct studies. The marsh is part of that system.
"We want to know, is climate change a factor here," Reay said. "We believe it will be."
Contact Rex Springston at (804) 649-6453 or rspringston@timesdispatch.com.
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