Climate change in Gloucestershire

Natural solutions like wetland creation where we can hold back water and release it much slower. Wetlands help retain the water, and beavers can help to slow the flow to help with flooding, with carbon sequestration and water retention.

Wildlife needs to be able to move around to adapt to the changing climate, but what we have is a lot of habitats that are really fragmented so it’s very difficult for wildlife to move around, so we have something called the NRN which aims to link these places together across Gloucestershire. What wildlife likes is predictability, so an early autumn followed by a second spring is hard work for specialist species like farmland birds, so predictability is what we want but if that’s going to change then what we want is the ability to react to that.

That doesn’t just go for wildlife, but for humans as well. There’s something called survival ecology which talks about how we need to create places that can sustain the lives of the future, to enable wildlife to exist but also to enable the things that we need from the wild.

One of our beloved mammals, the water voles, would find it more difficult to live in this county. Increasingly unpredictable severe flooding events may mean that water vole habitats in the Severn Vale will become unviable.

This would be catastrophic for these charming creatures, as evidence has shown that they've undergone long term declines across the UK, with some studies indicating they've disappeared from 94% of their former sites.

Water voles dig extensive and complex burrow systems into the banks of waterways, consisting of sleeping chambers at various levels and underwater entrances to give them safe routes for escape.

One of the seemingly contradictory changes we’ll see is that saltmarsh habitats along the Severn will be lost to rising sea-level rises while droughts become more common. At a whopping 220 miles long, the River Severn is the longest river in Great Britain, with the Severn estuary making up 40 miles of its length. An impressive bore (a mini tidal wave) pushes its way up the river at various times throughout the year.

The Severn estuary represents about 4% of the total area of saltmarsh in the UK and supports internationally important numbers of aquatic invertebrates and waterfowl. Plants here are called halophytes and have adapted to thrive in the salty intertidal environment found here, but if sea levels rise then these areas will be submerged all the time and lost completely.

Curlew, shelducks, redshank, and other bird species that call this niche habitat home would no longer be able to find the food they’re looking for and the shelter for their young.

While overall beech trees are likely to expand their range in the UK, across the south and in Gloucestershire, conditions are likely to become unsuitable due to temperature rises and the soil type found here.

Beech trees are sensitive to both extremes of wet and dry conditions, while are likely to become more severe and unpredictable. The lowland areas with free-draining soils, like those found in the Cotswolds, make beeches particularly sensitive to the prolonged summer droughts which will become more commonplace. Droughts put the trees under stress, reducing their growth which is turn reduces leaf cover, leaving them less able to fight infections and reduces seed production. This will result in a downward spiral for the current beech populations.

Beech trees also have shallow root systems, so droughts followed by wet conditions could lead them to fall.

We have a number of veteran beech trees at Crickley Hill that would be at risk. Veteran beeches range from 125 to over 200 years of age, and while veteran trees aren’t as old or complex as ancient trees, they still provide holes, cavities and crevices which are especially important for wildlife.

Water temperature is one of the most important factors that impact fish populations, especially cold-water species like brown trout. Both their body temperature and their metabolism are regulated by their environment, the water.

Changes in temperature will also impact breeding. Female trout (called hens) start building their nests, known as redds, in the gravelly riverbed from November to January when the water is cold and carrying lots of oxygen as that’s what the eggs need to hatch.

Predicted changes in rain patterns and more frequent flash flooding will also negatively influence breeding occurrence, success, and can lead to less stable spawning grounds.

As well as directly putting their bodies under pressure and impacting breeding, higher water temperatures can increase the emergence of diseases like proliferative kidney disease (PKD), depleting the already stressed populations.

While genetic variance could partially compensate for the effects of changes temperatures, the rapid changes predicted will leave the fish with no time to adapt.

A changing climate alters the timing of the seasons and can have huge impacts on the growth of plants. While this can be devastating for the plants themselves, it will have knock-on effects on a plethora of other species.

Insects’ life cycles are synchronised with the plants their larvae rely on to survive, called larval foodplants. If seasons arrive later or earlier, this can in turn have negative impacts on birds, which rely on a supply of caterpillars not only to survive themselves but to feed their young.

Increased periods of drought will also mean that will be fewer foodplants for rare limestone grassland butterflies.

Lots of species may start migrating northwards to cope with rising temperatures, so we could see a loss of lots of insect species while others from further south move in to take advantage of the new territories.

While some places may become hot and dry, other places can become cooler or wetter. Some species, like the garden tiger moth, have adapted to survive long frosty winters don’t do as well with the milder wetter winters, and indeed has declined massively since the 70s and continues to do so.