Were Edward A. Birge and Chancy Juday Antecedent Wetland Scientists?

Edward A. Birge (1851-1950) and Chancey Juday were among the most influential limnologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States.They primarily studied the physics and chemistry of Wisconsin lakes and how these environmental factors affected the distribution and composition of their plankton communities.Birge and Juday published several survey papers that summarized data on the concentration of gases and the water chemistry of many lakes that varied in size and depth.Because they assumed higher plants contributed little or nothing to the dissolved and particulate organic carbon in lake water, they consciously ignored higher plants in their lake surveys.However, an examination of the data in these surveys suggests that some of the lakes sampled today would be classified as palustrine wetlands or lakes with significant lacustrine wetland areas.Like most early limnologists, Birge and Juday saw themselves as freshwater oceanographers, believing that plankton was the only important direct and indirect source of dissolved and particulate carbon in water.Because of their biases, Birge and Juday's research did not increase wetland visibility or advance wetland science.