Warblers and sparrows call across the treetops at sunrise. Deer browse the shrubs. Black bears turn over roots for insects. Above ground, this stretch of North Carolina's Inner Banks looks like farmland, cotton and soybeans and corn running to the horizon.
The reason scientists and investors have converged on this 60-square-kilometre tract is underneath it: dense, spongy peat, up to five metres deep, the Associated Press reported.
