Sunken Forests of New Hampshire
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sunken Forests of New Hampshire are two large areas of tree stumps submerged off New Hampshire's coast. Both of the forests' main reasons for sinking below sea level are due to interrelated phenomena after the ending of the Wisconsin Glaciation and rise in temperature; isostatic rebound has not kept pace with the rise in sea level, and former coastal forest has been overtaken locally by the Atlantic Ocean.
The trees could not thrive, even when they were in the early stages of sinking, because they cannot thrive in salt water for very long. What is left of the forests are just preserved stumps.
Contents |
[edit] Forests
[edit] Odiorne Point Sunken Forest
Near Odiorne Point, Rye, it is frequently visible at most low tides. Scuba diving to see the stumps is quite common.
[edit] Jenness Beach Sunken Forest
The Jenness Beach forest, much larger than Odiorne Point, is rarely sighted above sea level. Sightings have occurred in 1940, 1958, 1962, and 1978. The trees, eight to ten feet in circumference, have been carbon dated from 3,400 to 3,800 years old. Currently, only 56 stumps remain, but due to the circumference of the trees, it was likely to have been a much vaster forest. The seafloor on which it sits was probably submerged after the Wisconsin glaciation. Some estimates say that the coastline of New England used to extend 75 miles east of its current position; a Native American of the era could have walked from Nantucket to southern Cape Cod without touching the Atlantic Ocean. Another estimate states that New Hampshire's shore could have been a few miles inland [citation needed]. The former estimate is more likely. Fishermen have hauled up mastodon and mammoth teeth miles offshore, suggesting that the forest extended quite far from its western shoreline boundary. The last few yards of the transatlantic telegraph cable laid in 1874 may have gone through the sunken forest.
