Information and IdeasVery hardInference about ghost forests
Information and Ideas practice question
Along low-lying Atlantic coasts, stands of dead trees — 'ghost forests' — rise from ground that looks dry. The killer is underground: rising seas push salt water into coastal aquifers, poisoning roots far inland of any visible flooding, while the mapped shoreline stays where it was. To researchers tracking sea-level rise, the bleached trunks show that coastal forests ____
Which choice most logically completes the text?
- A. register the sea's advance years before it appears on maps of the shoreline.Correct
- B. die primarily from diseases carried by insects.
- C. can recover once the saltwater recedes.
- D. grow faster than trees farther inland.
Answer: A. register the sea's advance years before it appears on maps of the shoreline.
The trees are killed by salt moving through groundwater while the shoreline on maps is unchanged — so the dead stands record the advance before mapping does.
Why the other answers are wrong
- B. die primarily from diseases carried by insects.
- The text attributes the deaths to saltwater in the soil, not to insects or disease.
- C. can recover once the saltwater recedes.
- The text calls the stands dead and describes a one-way advance; no recovery is described.
- D. grow faster than trees farther inland.
- Growth rates are never compared in the text.
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