- One of Europe’s most important deltas, an important wildlife sanctuary and economic engine, faces many threats arising from climate change and water management.
- Rising sea levels and stronger storms wash away more of the sediment that makes up the Ebro Delta and send saltwater farther afield.
- The government’s plan to stabilize the delta relies heavily on trucking sediment to its exposed outer banks, but this is a stop-gap measure until researchers can develop a more sustainable long- solution term.
- The question is: Can they find an hour?
EBRO DELTA, Spain — Located on an oyster and mussel farming platform in the middle of Fangar Bay, Vacile Cotirlet works with sure moves with two decades of experience. Cotirlet secures small cylinders covered with oyster saliva to a long rope. He would drop some of those ropes from the wooden lattices that make up the farm so that the spit would grow to marketable size in the shallow waters of the bay.
“There is everything here: eels, crabs, sea snails,” he told Mongabay. “But now that’s gone.”
The reason for this loss of biodiversity in Spain’s Ebro Delta, the third largest in the Mediterranean? Scientists focus on climate change and river management of the Ebro River.
Last year, the water temperature in the delta reached 87 degrees Fahrenheit, high even for a tropical sea, especially a temperate sea like the Mediterranean. The result was a 100% death of the mussel spit and a loss of 385,000 pounds ready for the market, Gerardo Bonet, director of the Federation of Mollusc Producers of the Ebro Delta, told Mongabay. Mussel growers in the delta must replace their losses worth hundreds of thousands of euros by buying from growers in Italy and Greece so they can sell to their own customers, said Bonet.
Climate change is also affecting one of the main industries in the delta. Rice fields, which produce the area’s most important crop, were squeezed between storms that broke the sand barrier that protects the low-lying fields from the open sea and rising salt water. “There is a fight between fresh water and salt water in the fields,” said Albert Pons, head of the rice sector for the Union of Farmers, to Mongabay. And the salt water is winning, putting at risk 22,000 hectares (54,400 acres) of rice cultivation in the area.
The threats facing the plantations are the result of a wide variety of wildlife, especially birds, that thrive in the wetlands. The Ebro Delta is an important breeding, wintering and migration habitat for hundreds of bird species. About 27,000 pairs of waterfowl breed in the area during the summer and about 180,000 winter there, according to the nonprofit SEO/BirdLife.
With climate change causing sea level rise and an increase in the frequency and severity of hurricanes, the delta needs sediment to replenish its soil and maintain wildlife habitat. However, more than 180 dams, first built in the 1960s and ’70s, prevent much of the natural flow of sediment from reaching the delta.
“There is no compensation for the rapid erosion of the sea,” Antoni Espanya, head of beaches in the province of Tarragona for Spain’s Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, told Mongabay. The result is the loss of up to 5 meters (16 feet) of coastline per year in some areas, according to Agustín Sánchez-Arcilla, project coordinator of REST-COAST, an EU-funded project piloting solutions for to restore the shores of Europe.
While scientists, farmers and conservationists have been raising the alarm about the delta for many years, the issue reached the main consciousness of the Spanish public during Hurricane Gloria in January 2020. the delta was destroyed. The flooding reached 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) inland, damaging rice crops, and it broke the Trabucador sand band, a critical barrier that required immediate reconstruction afterward. “We’ve never had anything like this before,” Lluís Soler, mayor of the town of Deltebre, told the BBC.
The (multi-)million dollar question now is what to do. The government’s official plan, launched in 2021 to the tune of 20-30 million euros ($22-33 million), relies heavily on loading sediment from the lower part of the delta to the exposed outer banks. . But shifting sand is a “Band-Aid Solution,” says Pons, the rice farmer. And, as the government was the first to admit, trucks are a very carbon-intensive method of transportation. The public may accept protecting the Delta, a relatively small part of the coast, in this way, but how do you protect the rest of Spain’s coasts and beyond? The solution then becomes part of the problem, Sánchez-Arcilla, of REST-COAST, told Mongabay.
Transporting the sediment by trucks can only be a temporary measure until more sustainable methods are proven. The REST-COAST team, for example, is trying to re-establish the river as a primary transporter of sediment. Removing the dams is politically difficult (the river spans eight of Spain’s 17 separate autonomous regions), so researchers are experimenting with ways to move sediment over the dams and then allow the river to get it the rest of the way. However, tests on the river’s content have been put on hold since 2022 due to the drought.
And there is a raging debate on the best way forward. Other potential solutions include removing dams to allow the river to function naturally (despite the obstructions), building sediment bypasses at the dams, growing grasslands to serve as natural breakwaters and reduce the need for filling the sediment, and buying land on the coast for the surrender of the sea.
The effects of climate change, not long ago felt far away by the people of Europe, have become difficult to ignore, with scorching heat waves, fires, floods and droughts sweeping the continent. In the Ebro Delta, residents understand that things have changed permanently.
“Young people who inherit family farms or start businesses are scared,” Spain said. “They don’t know if they can continue to do that work or, more importantly, continue to live in their ancestral homes.”
Banner image: Flamingos in the Ebro Delta. Image by candi via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
Sea level rise is evident, even for the most prepared country on Earth
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