Along America's three coasts, the ancient negotiation between land and sea is tilting toward the water. A first-of-its-kind national assessment has found that 84 percent of U.S. coastal wetlands are being overtaken by seas rising nearly twice as fast as they did a century ago — a quiet unraveling that threatens not only birds and endangered species but the storm buffers and ecological foundations that coastal communities depend upon. Yet the study arrives not only as an accounting of loss, but as something rarer: a map of where intervention can still hold the line, and where the marsh, given r
84% of U.S. coastal wetlands drowning as seas rise, but new map shows which can be saved
Wetland loss threatens migratory bird populations, endangered species habitat, and coastal communities' storm surge protection and infrastructure resilience.