What of the Future? - Climate Change Impacts on Freshwater Ecosystems - page 296

river was overwhelmingly dominated by common carp skulking under a thick
cover of floating weed. Even the tropical scourges of water cabbage and water
hyacinth gave problems.
Paradoxically, the difficulties and shortages had led to more local community
cooperation. To be sure there was a great deal of black market skulduggery, but
the much warmer weather had brought about more contact between people and
a great deal of ingenuity was emerging in solving the pervasive small problems of
existence. Bottled water was no longer affordable for taxes had had to be raised
greatly to pay for the services needed by a hugely increased population, many of
them unemployed, though demands for workers on the land were increasing.
The dry summers nonetheless held the market for moisturizing creams!
The Mediterranean zone
In the late 20th century, white-walled houses with red-tiled roofs, in small villages
and hamlets, graced the hillsides of the upper and middle sections of the valley
of the River Graecerina, whilst its lower reaches held large flood plain lagoons
before it discharged into the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, on a coast
studded with holiday resorts. The uplands, where the headwater streams flowed,
at least in the winter, bore a scrubby evergreen forest of oak, juniper and pine,
where the goats and sheep had not prevented its regeneration. Wolves and bears
were still living in the National Park that occupied a large tract of the upland. In
the middle sections were terraces of orderly vines and olive trees. The lagoons
were shallow and some still retained a prolific bird life whilst others, isolated
from the river, dried down to salty mudflats, pecked over by waders in summer.
The fauna was still rich with reptiles, amphibia and fish, many of them endemic
to the region and, especially among the amphibia, dependent on the temporary
seasonal nature of the ponds in the flood plain.
The rural population was small because farming had been under pressure from
lack of water for some time, and most of the population had moved to exploit
the opportunities of the tourist industry at the coast. Pilgrims visited holy springs
that permanently flowed from the limestone rocks, but this was a dry landscape
and river flows were very low in summer, though they had not yet ceased entirely.
Winter brought an equable mean temperature of about 8°C and most of the
rainfall of 550 mm. Summer temperatures averaged 28 °C, sometimes rising well
into the thirties or even more than 40 °C, but the real problem was the lack of
water because evaporation accounted for nearly 90% of all the rain that fell.
Former inhabitants had stored the precious water in cisterns underground and
understood the dynamics of the wells. Economic pressures in the 20th century,
however, had undermined this ancient wisdom and water had been mined from
the ground to irrigate wheat, and market gardening for high-value vegetables and
fruit on the coastal plain, and some industry along the lower, now heavily
engineered reaches of the river, but even more to serve the demands of residents
and visiting tourists for swimming pools and power showers.
By the mid 21st century, a rise to 480 ppm in carbon dioxide, with a concomitant
increase in methane from the melting permafrost far to the north, and the