You Might not Like it, but you have to Love it
- 29 Nov 06, 12:31 PM
In Britain, this is a wonderful time of year to walk along estuaries. With Ireland, we certainly have an important European wide responsibility for them, and we're even up there globally. They are harsh flat places, often wet and windy and dominated by sticky mud - which if you tread in it smells of rotten eggs. Not many people like these places - but like a Rembrandt masterpiece, do you have to like it to appreciate its value - to love and treasure it. Climate change is hitting them.
Global warming is melting the polar ice caps, the mountain glaciers and other land ice. The sea level is rising and putting pressure on coastal habitats around the world. Not least, the stark and spectacular wilderness of an estuary.
Estuaries are where the river meets the sea. The river along its course erodes the rock of its bed and brings this down as sediment. When the suspended silt reaches the river mouth, the sea water makes it globular and sticky and so it falls forming sheets of nutrient rich sticky mud. The tide comes and goes, replenishing the nutrient and building yet more mud. These become some of the most important marginal habitats on earth, being the home for literally billions of mud worms of various species, molluscs and crustaceans - all of which are food for countless numbers of waterfowl and waders. These are amazing places.
Sea level rise is forcing these salt marshes and estuaries to go on the move. The river meets the sea sooner, so the mud wants to shift inland. Whether it can or not is in part related to local geography, but to a greater extent to the level of development along our coasts - not just buildings, but farm land.
Coastal squeeze as it is called threatens the coastal margins and hence coastal communities of people and wildlife the world over. Much of the human race make their living by the coast, or live near it. This is a huge issue.
In the past we have built sea walls to keep the sea out. Not so much because we were worried about sea level rise, but because we wanted to drain the marsh to create super fertile farm land. And we want access to the fishery. The salt marsh and estuary is on the seaward side of the wall. But now sea level rise is submerging the mud as the seas meets the barrier of the sea wall.
There are impressive schemes to punch holes through the sea walls in places to allow the sea to reclaim the farmland behind - allowing the mud to go on the march. There is evidence that marine life will colonise almost over night. And certainly in a year, pelegic fish fry are living where cash crops grew only a year before. There are big issues here - managed retreat (the official word for this approach) - doesn't find favour with all farmers and shell fish fisheries who can be affected by changes in water flow, depth and turbidity.
If you go to an Estuary or coastal salt marsh you are likely to have wonderful experiences seeing wildlife and touching wilderness. Spectacular flocks of golden plover, knot, shell duck - maybe wigeon, pink footed geese and many more species. In other parts of the world, stints and stilts, plovers and phaloropes - And many species of duck and geese.
If you tread in the mud you smell the good work of the bacteria that re-cycle the trapped nutrient in the mud layers. The mud is black and sticky and stains your clothes. In winter the wind is probably blowing hard and there is no shelter. It's wild and wonderful.
A few of us love these places. But many I know find them featureless and harsh.
Climate change, coupled with our centuaries long campaign to develop the coast line, is threatening these priceless wild places. Their intrinsic value harbouring biodiversity, a feeding stop over site for migrant birds, a hugely important habitat for shell fish and bony fish (Oysters are key stone species here) - the mud is a biological converter for pullution and excess nutrient running off farm land - as a coastal defence from rising sea and storm surges. And there's more. They are such a powerful place to feel the force and character of mother nature. We can re-connect with the natural world, just by being there.
So, like a Rembrandt - you might not like it, but it's priceless and its value will only get greater in the future.
You don't have to like it to love it - and want to keep it. But try to like it, it'll do your soul good.
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I live , which flows into the Solway Firth in Scotland. It is indeed one of the richest biota systems on the planet.
Fortunately, we're about 120 feet above high water....but the mudflats and salt marshes are indeed wonderful places to visit and enjoy the birdlife and wide vistas, soon to be decorated with sixty on an offshore sandbank.
Keep up the good work, and
Vaya con Gaia
ed
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Dead right, saltmarshes are incredibly atmospheric places. Not pretty, but fascinating, untamed, moving. My favourite is the big expanse of mud and sand on the north of Gower in south Wales. Semi-wild ponies graze far out below the tideline and you can see them wade for land as the tide returns.
Saltmarsh is a habitat that is really being squeezed by the impact of global warming, but it is also under threat because tidal power is seen as a quick-fix to boost the UK's renewable energy output.
That means that politicians on both sides of the Severn are giving serious thought to a barrage across the estuary. To my mind it would be a local-scale environmental disaster justified by a global-scale one; two wrongs, no right.
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I am struck by the fact that in the current discussions on how to ameliorate the results of excessive mobility, such as and emissions of Greenhouse Gasses, the necessity for such accelerated is never questioned.
We have apparently become so addicted to spending so much of our time and energy in rushing about or enjoying the delights of out of season foods and imported toys that we cannot bear the idea of actually doing with less. In other words, we will consider almost any solution except reducing or even questioning the 'need' for such behaviour. This is exactly how a junkie regards his or her 'need' for the next, bigger fix.
Rather than consider using less energy, we seem willing to accept the Devil's bargain and embrace nuclear power. Even the game of visiting the farm animals on ceebeebies involves flying around in an airplane.
Yours Aye
ed
P.S.
There is a searchable database of marine and coastal ecosystems at:
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C'mon Ed
We genuflect at the foot of the God of market forces, and I won't have a word said against 'competition'. It is innate to us, we need the buzz. It's what adrenaline and endogenous opiates are for. You do it for the sake of it, often forgetting what it was you set out to do - why do you think we built the M25!!?
Policy change is needed in order to bring sense to the ant hill. New Labour's the 'third way' was supposed to temper capitalism with a more touchiefeelie, socialist element. Unfortunantely, 'third way' was also a decision making control mechanism - and that element still predominates. Until true science is properly incorporated into the political and economic agenda we will continue to channel vital energy in an inappropriate fashion.
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Hi Bob,
I see your current issue deals with the taboo. Any e-glimpses available (free)?
As to policy change, I think paradigm change is needed and have my doubts about policies. You might be interested in by an articulate soil scientist, from which the laws of Technodynamics:
1. Conservation of problems: Problems do not go away, they are merely
substituted, one for another. The solution of one problem creates
another problem.
2. Technological challenges always increase. As the human population
increases and natural resources remain constant or degrade, then
technological challenges will increase in size, number, and complexity."
--Eric A Davidson,
or: The chief cause of problems is solutions.
ed
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Thanks Ed
It's available as a low res pdf - about 4.5 megs and can e-mail to you. Alternatively, will place it on-line when back in the office on Monday.
Re: eating GNP and the problem with solutions - I entirely accept your paradigm point and will eat humble pie too.
At the risk of sounding like the thought police - what are the suggested steps / guidelines for implementing the shift?
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Hi again Bob,
A link would do fine, thanks, as email sometimes balks at big attachments.
As to guidelines, follow the link to , where there are some 'Modest Proposals for Profound Changes'
Sorry I can't lend you my copy, which has temporarily gone missing, but it's worth buying if you like the look of the review.
Sometimes I think our best hope lies in the collapse of the Global Economy (capitalised as appropriate for dieties).
You may find some useful comments , from which:
"A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another
pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life."
-- Wendell Berry in
ed
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Julian and Colleagues,
I'm unsure where to post this link, so here it is.
, physicist, adjunct professor: Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, director: NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science and their lead climate scientist spoke to a packed lecture theatre at Bristol University on Friday (17Nov06).
ed
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For more on alternative measures of well-being see this at the New Economics Foundation (nef) and to my surprise Simon Jenkins wrote this on hyper-mobility in the Guardian recently Interesting.
Ed, thanks for the Berry piece. And about those wind turbines. I sympathise but they do seem to be one of the least bad options. I've seen the array off north Wales/Wirral and they are far enough out to be pretty unobtrusive.
I'm often struck by how we've "got used" to electricity pylons and power lines. I've seen many scarring the landscape in, for instance, south Wales and Essex.
In contrast a propellor blade is quite a beautiful thing, admittedly best appreciated up close.
Maybe we need to develop a new aesthetic.
And Julian that barrage idea is very worrying. Big brutalist projects are not the solution.
Douglas Coker
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Douglas,
Thanks for the Jenkins link. About time! Have you seen and takes on extrametabolic mobility?
My objection to wind turbines is more to the indelicate rush to find ANYTHING which offers a chance to continue our energy-profligate lifestyles, a true sign of addiction. The same holds for tidal barrages, nuclear, wave, etc. I also object to the tendency to concentrate on large, grid-based systems as opposed to localised appropriate-scale, community-based provision.
An encouraging fact is that almost invariably when folks get involved in producing even a portion of their energy needs, they develop an appreciation of their usage and it declines.
considers Western Civilization an addictive agent in itself.
Berry Considers hope a duty. You can read an account of a recent talk and there is a link to actually listen. Glad you enjoyed the collection of quotes. The best overall statement is .
Enough for now.
ed
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and personally, I don't like the look of wind turbines. The energy cost of producing the things also concerns we - what is the pay back period?
Geothermal strikes me as a better idea - even London now seems to be benefiting from this. However, whatever the renewable solution - I hate to remind everyone - it does not address more fundamental issues! While on the subject of estuaries - is there a danger that this is a bit of a red herring!?
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