What of the Future? - Climate Change Impacts on Freshwater Ecosystems - page 291

resemble much more those of the downstream reaches. New dragonflies and other
insects had appeared and the surrounding hill forests were changing. There were
more clear-felled areas as demand for biofuels increased, and more soil erosion.
Outbreaks of insect pests had devastated some of the plantations and the European
beech was spreading in the remaining forests along with more exotic trees, whose
seeds had escaped from garden plantings. Ecologists found some adaptation
through natural selection in algae and invertebrates but this had had very little
measurable effect on the overall functioning of the rivers, ponds and reservoirs.
They regretted the loss of highly specialist species of mountain springs, which
now dried up in summer, but the populace in general was more concerned with
the increasingly frequent summer heat waves. Sometimes summer temperatures
became unbearable outdoors between mid morning and late afternoon.
The government had encouraged more food growing, for imported supplies
had dwindled as other countries looked to their own needs and the previous
practice of flying in fresh food from other continents had been made uneconomic
by the hugely increased cost of fuel, following the passing of peak oil production
20 years before. The consequence was an increased leakage of nutrients to the
rivers and their reservoirs, and to the groundwater. Algal blooms in the reservoirs
had become more frequent, leading to greater costs of purifying drinking water.
Rotting scums at the edges, as the water levels fell, even resulted in a resurgence
of botulism in birds and poisoning of unfortunately thirsty sheep and dogs. Ponds
in the catchment were increasingly drying up in summer, with a loss of habitat for
amphibians and some large invertebrates that were unable to coexist with fish in
the larger ponds and reservoirs. Some of these were now very rare. The attempts
of the European Community to improve ecological quality through the Water
Framework Directive of 2000 had been frustrated, at first by the general preference
to maintain economic growth over environmental quality but then simply by the
climate-induced changes in biological communities that had exposed the somewhat
dated approach to ecology with which the Directive had been saddled. The
scramble to grow more food, to protect buildings from flooding and to cling on
to a car culture had all been nails in its coffin. There was administrative confusion.
Warming was a global problem but international attempts to mitigate it had always
been frustrated by the special pleading of one powerful nation or another.
Successive government policies thus grasped at straws and followed fashions as
the temperature continued to rise. Such confusion was nothing new. The people
were used to it. But there was an air of foreboding.
Towards the end of the 21st century confusion still reigned. Temperatures
were rising inexorably because sufficient measures to curb carbon emissions had
been taken too modestly and too late, and biological feedback from the increased
respiration of organic soils and loss of methane from the northern permafrost
had greatly accelerated the net accumulation of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere. Despite mounting evidence, the lesson that conditions for human
comfort on the planet were ultimately determined by huge biological forces and
the colossal mobilization of the common chemical elements rather than by the
puny mechanics of man-made economics had still not been finally accepted.
The Gutfluve catchment suffered torrential rainstorms and saw no snow in
winter. In summer it sweltered and the streets of the towns and villages were