Concerns over climate change and global warming have been once again heightened over the frightening news that the coast of South Carolina has seen rising sea levels in an undeveloped region of its fenny landscape.
South Carolina's Georgetown County was once replete with acres of forested wetlands, but is now rife with salty marshes looming with dead trees, courtesy of what may have taken some time to observe but is now irrefutable: Sea levels have definitely been rising in the area, and that's an awful portent to what we can expect in the future.
"When you go into the field, you really see a lot of trees dying," Alex Chow - a teacher in biosystems engineering at Hobcaw Barony's Clemson University's Baruch Institute of Coastal Ecology and Forest Science - said as relayed by Associated Press. Hobcaw Barony being a 17,500-acre wildlife refuge just northeast of Georgetown.
Aerial photos were used by Chow and two of his colleagues in order to gauge how salt water has intruded upon the freshwater Strawberry Swamp via Winyah Bay, which is close by.
A study by Chow and his colleagues published in the quarterly journal of the international Society of Wetland Scientists -- "Wetland Science and Practice" -- detailed back in December that the salt marsh in the Georgetown County region in question has gone from 4 acres to more than 16 acres in the last sixty years.
Co-author of the study Tom Williams, a professor emeritus of forestry and natural resources, feels global warming might not necessarily be the culprit here.
"Over long periods - and what we looked at is over 60 years - the maritime forest retreats at approximately the same rate sea level rises," Williams said.
"It's been a little more dramatic in recent years," William Conner, a professor of forestry and natural resources at the institute, said, adding that "what is happening in Strawberry Swamp is similar to what is happening throughout the Southeast where the shorelines tend to be flattened," according to Associated Press.
The actual measurement of sea level rising has reached an average of 3 to 4 millimeters a year over the last 100 years, the study suggests.
"Based on the calculations in this study, you can see it's happening much faster in the past two decades," Chow said.
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