Breaching tradition: Salt marshes replacing Nova Scotia's dikes (CBC’s Atlantic Voice)
Dikes were first deployed by Acadian settlers in the 17th century to transform tidal wetlands in the Bay of Fundy into agricultural fields. Their efforts created some of the most fertile farmland in the Maritimes. Over time, important infrastructure such as roads, rail links and entire communities took advantage of the protection offered by dikes.
With climate change, sea levels are rising faster than dikes can be topped up. That challenge is compounded by the fact dikes are also subsiding.
As researchers, government officials and citizens look at new ways to protect Nova Scotia's coastal communities, one marsh near the border between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick represents the new reality on a coastline that hasn't changed for hundreds of years.
The roughly 15-hectare patch of marsh along the Missaguash River in Fort Lawrence, N.S., used to be farmland. Now, it's one of two pilot sites for a new method of coastal protection. Here, rather than building the dike higher to keep the sea at bay, researchers are letting the water flow through.
"These were areas that were previously identified as areas at high risk and high vulnerability," said Danika Van Proosdij, one of the lead researchers on a project called Making Room for Wetlands.
"And the cost of maintaining a dike in these places was prohibitive, but also was not possible ... because the trajectory of erosion was increasing."