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Marshes are among the most important ecosystems in the world, but also are rapidly disappearing on a global scale, making it necessary but difficult to understand the processes behind natural marsh building. In this study, 210Pb-derived accretion rates are examined in a marsh at the Newport-River mouth, (NC), a location that has experienced ongoing emergence of new marshland over the past several decades. Accretion rates at all marsh-sampling sites shifted from slow sedimentation emblematic of the bay-bottom to rapid sedimentation that persisted as each site progressed from being an exposed mudflat to eventually becoming a newly colonized marsh table. This transition occurred asynchronously across the marsh and prior to vegetative colonization. This indicates that a physical transition occurred, likely due to a decrease in erosive processes such as wave-stirring. Creating a local regime of quiescence, these transitions promoted accretion and initiated marsh building that continues today.

Patrick Jackson’s book on The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations offers graduate students, younger scholars, and, indeed, many specialists a useful map for charting the often inhospitable terrain of scholarship in the field of International Relations (IR). This is particularly the case as far as illuminating the awakening to issues in the philosophy of science that has taken place in IR during the last two decades. Jackson presents a typology for sorting the debates about the nature and demands of scientific inquiry, which have often been conducted, either explicitly or implicitly, in terms of diverse and complicated philosophical arguments. As opposed to many previous analyses, which have tended to be couched in terms of dichotomies and biased toward a particular philosophical persuasion, Jackson’s scheme is remarkably neutral, but, in some respects, maybe too neutral.