Dave Martin / AP

A leafless tree stands over graves in the Cheniere Caminada cemetery in Grand Isle, La. Many coastal Louisiana cemeteries are just skeletons of what they used to be.

The Associated Press reports from Leeville, La. — As a young adult, Kathleen Cheramie visited her grandmother's grave in a tree-lined cemetery where white concrete crosses dotted a plot of lush green grass just off Louisiana Highway 1.

Now, the cemetery in Leeville is a skeleton of its former self. The few trees still standing have been killed by saltwater intruding from the Gulf. Their leafless branches are suspended above marsh grass left brown and soggy from saltwater creeping up from beneath the graves.

"It was a beautiful place to visit," said Cheramie, 67, who lives in nearby Golden Meadow. "It hurts to see it now."

Dave Martin / AP

What's left of the old Leeville cemetery is only accessible by boat. Some headstones are barely visible above the water, and waves lap at the bricks and concrete surrounding caskets buried at the site since the late 1800s. Much of the ground has subsided to barely sea level, and during Hurricane Isaac, about seven feet of land washed away in the tidal surge.

Cheramie's small family graveyard is among at least two dozen cemeteries across the southeast Louisiana coast that are rapidly sinking or washing away because of erosion and subsidence accelerated by the tropical punch of storms such as Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike, Lee and Isaac.

Slideshow: Isaac makes landfall on the US Gulf Coast

Coastal Louisiana has lost about 1,900 square miles of land since the 1930s as canals dug for oil exploration allowed salty water to intrude into marshes and a succession of powerful hurricanes sucked marsh muck that protects populated areas out into the Gulf.

Dave Martin / AP

Windell Curole handles pieces of headstone at his small family cemetery which sits along the bayou near Leeville. Curole said saltwater from the Gulf is causing a crippling subsidence problem.

South Lafourche Levee District General Manager Windell Curole, who also serves on the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said saltwater from the Gulf is causing a crippling subsidence problem.

"We did not bury people in marshes," Curole said. "We buried them on high ground. This was high ground, and now it's subsided to the point of being wetlands and open water." Read the full story.

Editor's note: Images taken on Dec. 29, 2012 and made available to NBC News today.

Dave Martin / AP

Water washes around and against the tombs of those buried in a Leeville, La., cemetery.

Jon Woo / Reuters

Villagers carry a gravestone of an ancestral tomb away from a construction site in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, China on December 18, 2012.

AP

Workers lay the foundations for a residential complex around a solitary tomb site in Taiyuan on December 6, 2012.

A tomb which was left standing in the middle of a Chinese construction site began to be exhumed on Tuesday.

Helped by local villagers, family members relocated four coffins containing the remains of the deceased, Reuters reports.

For seven months a 33-foot mound of earth containing the tomb, the sole survivor from a cemetery that had previously occupied the site, had stood at the center of a building project in the city of Taiyuan, Shanxi province.

Grave interruption: Building around a tomb in China

Some reports had called it a "nail grave" — a variant on the term "nail house", which describes those lone homes that stand in the way of development, like nails stuck in a board that can't be pounded down with a hammer.

'Nail house' holds up traffic as homeowners fight local government

According to local reports cited by Reuters, the family did not fulfill their agreement with village officers which had required them to move the tomb before December 15, saying instead that they were waiting for an auspicious date to perform the relocation. 

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Jon Woo / Reuters

Villagers stand around an ancestral tomb which is being relocated in Taiyuan on December 18, 2012.

Jon Woo / Reuters

Villagers carry coffins containing remains from an ancestral tomb in Taiyuan on December 18, 2012.

AP

Workers lay the foundation for a residential complex around a solitary tomb site in Taiyuan, China's Shanxi province, Dec. 6.

AP

Workers lay the foundation for a residential complex around a solitary tomb site in Taiyuan, China, Dec. 6.

Jon Woo / Reuters

An ancestral tomb, 33 feet high and about 30 square feet, on the construction site of a building in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, in China on Dec. 6.

AP

Workers lay the foundation for a residential complex around a solitary tomb site in Taiyuan, China, Dec. 6.

Developers bought a cemetery and paid villagers to relocate the remains of their loved ones. All except one. The grave has not been moved as the family is waiting for an auspicious date to do so and a reason from the developer for choosing this site, according to the owner of the tomb. The developers are now offering to pay nearly $160,000 to have it moved. The building is scheduled to be completed by April 2013, but for now, construction continues around the gravesite. Last week a home in Zhejiang province, that had been sitting in the middle of a newly built highway as the owners held out for more money, was finally demolished.

More photos from China on PhotoBlog

Edgar Su / Reuters

A 50-year-old grave digger who asked to be identified as Mr Sim exhumes a grave at Bukit Brown cemetery in Singapore on November 27, 2012.

Reuters reports — Eternal peace does not last long in Singapore.

Starting early next year, workers with heavy machinery will begin constructing an eight-lane highway across the small country's oldest surviving major cemetery, overriding the objections of nature lovers and heritage buffs.

Singapore, with its 5.3 million people crammed onto an island less than half the size of London, is already more densely populated than rival Asian business center Hong Kong, making permanent burial space unfeasible.

Edgar Su / Reuters

Mr Sim, left, breaks a tombstone with his sledgehammer as he exhumes a grave at Bukit Brown cemetery with his boss, Mr Leung.

The whole of Bukit Brown - the resting place of more than 100,000 people, including some of Singapore's pioneering business and clan leaders and their large, intricately carved tombs - will eventually be used for residential development. At least 30 people buried there have streets named after them.

Some families have begun removing the remains of their ancestors, and authorities plan to dig up the remaining graves in January. Read the full story.

Edgar Su / Reuters

Mr Sim holds two coffin nails found when exhuming a grave at Bukit Brown cemetery.

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Ersilia Carranza, left, Nubia Pineda, center, and Luchy Rodriguez dance next to the tomb of their friend Jorge, who died nine days before, at the General Cemetery in Guatemala City, Sept. 7, 2012. "Here in Guatemala we're screwed, but we laugh at everything, even death", said Byron Flores to The Associated Press.

Rodrigo Abd  / AP — In Guatemala, which has one of the highest mortality rates in the world and where violence is rampant, burial grounds have transformed into social spaces where relatives and friends of the deceased drink and dance as photographers are hired to take pictures and musicians play during funerals. Meanwhile, workers exhume bodies from plots that are behind on their payments, street peddlers set up shop and children play hide-and-seek.

Six years after a burial in the General Cemetery in Guatemala City relatives must pay around U.S. $24 to renew the burial plot for another four years, according to cemetery rules. If there is no payment, cemetery workers exhume the body and place the corpse in a mass grave. Over 2,000 bodies are exhumed annually after relatives fail to pay cemetery fees.

EDITOR’S NOTE: These images were made available to NBC News on Sept. 27.

Juana Lopez, 70, takes a nap as she waits for customers during funerals at the General Cemetery in Guatemala City, July 21.

Musicians from the band Los Tacuazines leave the General Cemetery in Guatemala City, Aug. 23. The band charges U.S. $38 to play eight songs during funerals.

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John Moore / Getty Images

Grieving pet owner Spencer Warren opens the casket of his beloved 12-year-old beagle-hound Justin in the viewing room of the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery and Crematory on April 30 in Hartsdale, New York. Warren, an Annandale, Virginia attorney, had traveled with Justin's body to bury him here on a shady hillside. The cemetery, established in 1896, is the oldest pet cemetery in the United States and serves as the final resting place for tens of thousands of pets. Pet owners can spend as much as $20,000 for a large plot to bury multiple pets and as little as $300-400 for small plots to bury ashes if they choose cremation. Pet owners also have the option of eventually having their own ashes buried in the plot, alongside their pets.

John Moore / Getty Images

Pet chaplain David James conducts a graveside service for Justin, a twelve-year-old beagle-hound at the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery and Crematory.

John Moore / Getty Images

Graves and tombs mark pets' final resting place at the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery and Crematory.

John Moore / Getty Images

Maddalena Sullivan visits a grave on the two-month anniversary of the death of her cat Spanky.

John Moore / Getty Images

A gravestone marks a pet's final resting place.

See more images of pets in PhotoBlog, and animals of all kinds in Animal Tracks. 

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Kyodo News via AP

Markings bearing numbers are prepared for burials at a temporary cemetery in Ishinomaki, a fishing port town devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, in northeastern Japan on May 12.

 Read our latest story, Two months after Japan quake, victims still await aid and see more images in our slideshow.

Albert Gea / Reuters

Solar panels fill the roofs of mausoleums in a cemetery in Santa Coloma de Gramanet, near Barcelona, Spain on March 28. Solar panels on the rooftops of Spain are likely to pay for themselves within five years without needing subsidies and revive an industry in the doldrums after the country became the world's second-largest producer.

 Is this a desecration of a cemetery or just good use of available space?