(Eamon Queeney/for The Washington Post)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. (Eamon Queeney/for The Washington Post)Alex Manda, a hydrologist at East Carolina University, sets up a weather station as part of the effort to determine what’s happening to coastal farmland. (Eamon Queeney/for The Washington Post)A monitoring well on Pugh’s land. One hypothesis is that strong winds may blow salt water from the sound into the canals and ditches that crisscross the county, which then leak into the soil.

Source: Washington Post March 02, 2019 00:28 UTC