Once-rich coastal land is turning barren — a trend expected to worsen as the world continues to warm.
East Carolina University graduate students Trevor Burns, left, and Tyler Palochak check groundwater monitoring equipment on a farm near Engelhard, N.C., in January. By Sarah Kaplan Sarah Kaplan Reporter for Speaking of Science Email Bio Follow March 1 at 7:27 PM MIDDLETOWN, N.C. — The salty patches were small, at first — scattered spots where soybeans wouldn’t grow, where grass withered and died, exposing expanses of bare, brown earth.
“We spend a lot of time and money to try to prevent salt,” Pugh says. “I worry what the future is. If it keeps getting worse, will it be worth farming?” Sensors lay on the ground beside a nest of scientific wells as Manda’s graduate students from East Carolina University study the groundwater. With that goal in mind, Pugh, Manda and Andrea Gibbs, the local agriculture agent for North Carolina Cooperative Extension, convened at the edge of Pugh’s saltiest field on a recent blustery afternoon.
Whatever the cause, both Pugh and Gibbs are anxious to find a solution. Pugh estimates that recent flooding — and the associated salinization — cost him $2 million in lost crops over the past five years. Last year, the field where Manda is now working became so pockmarked with barren patches Pugh stopped planting it altogether.“What percentage is like this?” Gibbs asks.And the barren patches may be growing. Most of the 4,000 acres that Pugh farms were inundated during Florence.
Or maybe the problem goes even deeper. Scientists are increasingly concerned that rising sea levels are shifting the “zone of transition” — the underground gradient where fresh groundwater meets salty seawater. This issue may be compounded by the slow sinking of North Carolina’s coastal plain since the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago.
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