The study shows that marsh encroachment can be up to seven times more frequent on agricultural land compared to forestland in the Mid-Atlantic and that regionally, agricultural land appears to have accelerated the impacts of saltwater intrusion. "We hypothesized, and most people would intuitively expect, that marshes would migrate slower into farmland, that forests are more vulnerable than farmland. But we found the opposite," Kirwan said. "On farmland, it's much more subtle. It's a row of crops at the edge of the field that's brown instead of green, but it still adds up to thousands of acres of lost agricultural production." ... "It's not that farmland is flat and therefore it retreats faster," Kirwan said. "Trees have lifespans of hundreds of years. It can take decades to kill a tree. Agricultural crops have lifespans of less than a year." submitted by /u/IntoTheCommonestAsh [link] [comments]