Interpreting Salt Marsh Dynamics: Challenging Scientific Paradigms

Abstract

From its inception as an object of study, salt marshes were conceived as a form of continual accumulation. For more than a century this paradigm structured the understanding of tidal marshes in Canada's St. Lawrence estuary and was used by physical and human geographers, biologists, agronomists, and ecologists to encourage marsh reclamation as a form of collaboration with nature. In the 1980s, this school of thought abruptly gave way to a school of generalized erosion. This new paradigm, resulting from the scientific and social reaction to the Anthropocene and the advent of applied research in risk management, underlies a crisis narrative used to promote intervention by concerned actors to protect marshes and human infrastructure. Although the changing socioeconomy of salt marshes is well known, the evolution of scientific thinking about them continues to be depicted in positivist terms. Critical reflection on salt marshes as a social construction of nature, however, demonstrates a clear chain of links between cultural values, scientific practices, and research outcomes. Lack of recognition of this subject–object problem impedes the current investigation of salt marsh dynamics as a function of both erosion and growth processes.