Three thousand to four thousand year old in situ tree stumps may be found on the mudflats at various locations along the Gulf of Maine. Several of these mudflats have been discovered in the Upper Bay of Fundy region. Fig.1 shows three locations in the Gulf of Maine. Fig. 2 and Fig. 4 provide an early image of in situ tree stumps on the flats at Fort Lawrence. These well rooted stumps are believed to extend under the present day Bay of Fundy salt marshes. These marshes are located between the mud flats and the upland (Fig. 3 is a 1914 photograph of of a drowned forest that was exposed when a drainage ditch was constructed on a salt marsh in Yarmouth ). Post glacial geologists believe that forests once grew in the regions where these mud flats and salt marshes now exist and that these forests were drowned three to four thousand years ago due to the submergence of these sites. As a result of the rising sea level, the trees were killed.

1)A supply of fine grained silt carried by tidal activity:

During the approximate period 8,600 years B.P. To 6,300 years B.P. The Minas Basin was non-tidal and sedimenation occured predominantly in the deeper parts of the embayment. From 6300 years B.P. to the present tidal activity has been incresing lineraly; the present tidal activity is the most energetic condition to have occured in the system. During this period deposition was progressively more predominent in the marginal regions, developing the sandflats, mudflats and salt marshes visible today. The progressive inundation of the Minas Basin margins is a function of an increase in tidal range (50%) and a rise in apparent mean sea-level (50%). (Amos 1978, p. 965)...material (18m to 37m in thickness) overlies a dissected Triassic bedrock surface (Amos 1978, p. 966).

2) The birth of a salt marsh:

A salt marsh is "born" by the arrival of a seed or the rafting of a plant of the cord grass Spartina alterniflora. The grass spreads asexually by means of a subterranean rhizome system. The grass becomes dense and forms a baffle, which encourages the deposition of fine particulate sediment, including organic matter (salt marsh peat). This, in effect, causes a rise of the sediment surface and makes the habitat more terrestrial. As this happens, other somewhat less salt-tolerant grasses are able to invade. Eventually, this series of invasions and takeovers leads to a vertical zonation of grasses and a spread of the entire marsh system. (http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/marinebio/spartina.html)

3) Radiocarbon Dating the Salt Marsh at Amherst Point .

4) Natural forces that can destroy the new beginnings of a salt marsh.

5) The Drainage Creeks.