Aboiteau
Aboiteau farming on reclaimed marshland is a labor-intensive method in which earthen dykes are constructed to stop high tides from inundating marshland. A wooden sluice or aboiteau (plural aboiteaux) is then built into the dyke, with a hinged door (clapper valve) that swings open at low tide to allow fresh water to drain from the farmland but swings shut at high tide to prevent salt water from inundating the fields.[1][2] Aboiteau farming is intimately linked with the story of French Acadian colonization of the shores of Canada's Bay of Fundy in the 17th and 18th centuries.[3] In the Kamouraska region of the St. Lawrence Valley of Quebec, aboiteau diking of salt marshes was closely tied to the modernization of agriculture in the 19th and early 20th centuries.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ "More funding for shifting aboiteau" - Metro News
- ^ "Excavation uncovers Acadian aboiteau" - Amherst Daily News
- ^ Hatvany, MG "The Origins of the Acadian Aboiteau: An Environmental Historical Geography," Historical Geography, 30 (2002): 121-137.
- ^ Hatvany, MG Marshlands: Four Centuries of Environmental Change on the Shores of the St. Lawrence (Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 2003).
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