| Ecological studies are often based in the observable present, viewing nature as a static environment of harmony, order and rationality. Such a perspective tends to isolate the history of human interaction with the environment from the rest of nature. Through an interdisciplinary approach combining geography, history and paleoecology, this study makes a vital contribution toward amending the prevailing ecological perspective of human relations with the environment through a study of the aboiteau diking of the Ramouraska salt marshes of the St. Lawrence Estuary of Quebec.;Recent human transformation of these marshlands, resulting in the disappearance of more than half the salt marshes of the estuary, did not happen without reason. Yet no study has yet to provide a profound understanding of the long-term socio-economic processes that explain why humans interacted with salt marshes, and why at certain moments in time that relationship resulted in radical environmental change. The study illustrates the necessity of an historical approach towards any understanding of long-term human interaction and change of nature. |
