Current warming and likely future impacts - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 320

freshwater fish (Teleostei), woodlice (Isopoda), ground beetles (Carabidae), harvest-
men (Opiliones), millipedes (Diplopoda), longhorn beetles (Cerambycidae), soldier
beetles and related species (Cantharoidea and Buprestoidea), aquatic bugs (Heterop-
tera) as well as birds (Aves) and mammals (Mammalia). For each group, species were
only included in the analyses if they were southern/low-elevation species, as these
species would be expected to increase their range sizes, move northwards and/or shift
to higher elevations if they were responding solely to temperature. Northern species
were excluded from the analyses because of a lack of data, with the exception of
birds. The results revealed that out of a total of 329 species analysed across 16 taxa,
275 species shifted northwards, 52 species shifted southwards and two species' range
margins did not move, with an average northwards shift across all species of 31-60
km. Similarly, with regard to altitudinal shifts, 227 species moved to higher altitudes
and 102 species shifted to a lower altitude, resulting in a mean increase in altitude of
25 m overall. Work such as this fed into MONARCH.
In addition to biological change, change in the soil carbon in England and Wales
has also been detected. Indeed, in 2005 the results of a detailed DEFRA-funded
survey was published (DEFRA was formerly the DETR, and before that it was the
Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, or MAFF). The survey was conducted
by Pat Bellamy and colleagues and covered the 25-year period from 1978 to 2003.
Its importance was that up to then evidence from temperate climates had virtually
entirely come from small-scale field experiments, laboratory studies and computer
modelling. However, the Bellamy team looked at samples of 15 cm depth from 5662
sites across England and Wales that had originally been taken as part of the National
Soil Inventory. They then revisited sites 12 or 25 years later. This was the only soil
inventory to have included resampling on such a scale anywhere on Earth. In addition
to soil analyses they also examined land use at each site. They found that carbon loss
from soils across England and Wales over the survey period took place at a mean rate
of 0.6% a year. They also found that the relative rate of carbon loss increased with a
soil's carbon content and was more than 2% a year for soils with greater than 100 g of
C per kg of soil. Their findings, which relate to ecological carbon leakage (as opposed
to economic carbon leakage, see sections 8.3.1 and 8.3.3), suggested that the losses
of soil carbon in England and Wales were irrespective of land use, which suggests a
link to climate change. However, they could not say where the carbon had gone but
likely destinations are a combination of transfer to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide
and leeching deeper into the ground. Nonetheless, considering the area of temperate
terrestrial ecosystems internationally, the implications for changes in carbon cycling
are significant.
Putting this top-soil carbon loss into the context of Britain's anthropogenic
emissions of carbon dioxide, the carbon loss from England and Wales is around
13 million t year − 1 . This is equivalent to about 8% of UK carbon dioxide emissions
(which includes those from Northern Ireland and Scotland, the soils of which were
not included in the survey). It is also more than equivalent to the past reductions in
UK carbon dioxide emissions between 1990 and 2002 (12.7 million t of C year − 1 ).
In 2010 DEFRA sought an appraisal of England's wildlife sites specifically with
regard to climate change, and this resulted in an assessment called Making Space
for Nature: A Review of England's Wildlife Sites and Ecological Network (Lawton