Landsat imagery shows decline of coastal marshes in Chesapeake and Delaware Bays

Dramatic losses of tidal wetlands in the Mississippi Delta and a few areas along the U.S. Atlantic coast have raised concerns about whether these marshes will survive if global sea level continues to rise due to greenhouse warming [ Stevenson et al ., 1986]. Original greenhouse warming sea‐level scenarios projected global sea levels several meters or more higher than present by 2100 [ Barth and Titus , 1984], which would result in the disappearance of all coastal marshes, as the scarcity of marsh deposits from the rapid transgression during the middle Holocene testifies [ Rampino and Sanders , 1981]. However, more recent estimates of global sealevel change suggest that some coastal marshes could survive [ Douglas et al ., 2000].