6/23/2023 0 Comments British lingoWhen sea levels rose in the seventh century B.C., people there learned to thrive on the region’s developing fens, hunting for fish and eels. Proulx jumps back as far as 20,000 years ago to the bottom of the North Sea, which at the time was a hilly swath called Doggerland. She challenges the notion that wetlands are purely unpleasant or disturbing - think Shrek’s swamp, where only an ogre would want to live, or the Swamps of Sadness in The Neverending Story that swallow up Atreyu’s horse. Known for her fiction, Proulx, who penned The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain,” draws on historical accounts, literature and archaeological digs to imagine places lost to time. Instead, Proulx investigates these environments in the context of their relationship with people. But the book doesn’t spend too much time on nitty-gritty ecology. They also sequester huge amounts of carbon dioxide, and some peatlands prevent shoreline erosion, while buffering land from storm surges ( SN: 3/17/18, p. For one, peatlands have great ecological value, supporting a variety of wildlife. “We are now in the embarrassing position of having to relearn the importance of these strange places,” Proulx writes. Only recently have the consequences of these losses become clear. settlers have drained more than half of the country’s wetlands just 1 percent of British fens remains today. Wet, muddy and smelly, wetlands were a nightmare for farmers and would-be developers. While all three ecosystems are found around most of the world, Proulx focuses primarily on northwestern Europe and North America, where the last few centuries of modern agriculture led to a huge demand for dry land. She details three types of peatland: fens, which are fed by streams and rivers bogs, fed by rainwater and swamps, distinguishable by their trees and shrubs. In Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis, Proulx seeks to fill the gaps. While the various types of peatlands - wetlands rich in partially decayed material called peat - do blend together, I can’t help but think, after reading her latest book, that a historical distaste and underappreciation of wetlands in Western society has led to the average person’s confusion over basic peatland vocabulary. It’s an exchange that probably wouldn’t surprise novelist Annie Proulx. “Let’s not pretend you know what a marsh is,” the other snaps. A recent TV ad features three guys lost in the woods, debating whether they should’ve taken a turn at a pond, which one guy argues is a marsh.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |