Scientists: State suffers from warming

Fishermen first noticed the change near Cedar Key.

Cabbage palms along the coast, ones they had used for years for navigation, were gone. Dying off as well were the cedar trees for which the island is named.

Researchers who studied the trees came to alarming conclusions: A rise in sea level that is accelerating with global warming is taking out Florida's coastal forests.

The oceans have been rising for 17,000 years, creeping up the state's beaches at the rate of roughly 0.6 millimeters a year. But since the Industrial Revolution, that rate has accelerated, and since 1993 it has reached about 3 millimeters a year, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

That does not sound like much. But with Florida's low topography, a few millimeters can bring the sea a considerable distance inland, poisoning trees with salt water, said Jack Putz, a professor of botany at the University of Florida.

"When you go along the Gulf Coast of Florida, it's not hard to find areas of dead trees,'' Putz said. "What we are seeing is a pretty rapid transition from forests to salt marshes.''

It is one among many clues that a changing climate will have a powerful effect on Florida, the subject of the state's first conference on global warming, which was held here last week.

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