LSU Researchers Discover ‘Swamp Power’ Preserved Ancient Underwater Forests

“Snapshots of Coastal Ecology Using Multiproxy Analysis Reveals Insights into the Preservation of Swamp and Marsh Environments Since the Late Pleistocene, ” Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (Courtesy Photo)

For more than 60,000 years, the standing tree stumps of the Alabama Underwater Forest, now 60 feet below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico, have remained intact, protected by the biogeochemical processes of the swamps and marshes they originally grew in.The ancient underwater forest about eight miles off the coast of Gulf Shores, Alabama, is known as a time capsule from the last ice age,...

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