In the "In Depth" section of this month's Newsletter we talk about how the Ebro delta and its people are adapting to global change.
"In the last 25 years, the delta has changed stratospherically," states one of the main characters from the new Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) and the outreach platform La Ciència al teu Món documentary, "Stories of global change. Chapter 1: The Ebro Delta", produced with the support of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT). And he is right, although these changes are not only the result of anthropogenic activity but also of the natural dynamics of this ecosystem.
As in other deltas, the river provides the sediment, while the sea and the wind redistribute it. This has been the case for some 6,000 years, when the Ebro delta began to emerge, coinciding with the end of the last glaciation and the consequent stabilization of the sea level, some 18,000 years ago.
Since then, the Ebro delta has undergone major transformations that went unnoticed until the human species settled in this place. You will remember the "Gloria" storm in 2020. It flooded most of the deltaic plain, the sea penetrated hundreds of meters inland and the Trabucador bar broke. All the media reported it.
In the documentary, José A. Jiménez, Ph.D. in Marine Sciences and Professor of Maritime Engineering and Coastal Management at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), confesses that he was not surprised about this case and that the Ebro delta is a history of equally or even more drastic changes. In fact, he claims to have seen in the 1990s, when he was working on his doctoral thesis, how the Trabucador bar broke and the water came up to his neck.
"The delta is in a phase of natural and expected reduction. When the delta plain was not occupied by anyone and there were changes, nothing happened, but now, no matter how small they are, they are a problem. The fact is that the coast has been receding, but we have not, so now the waves break closer and the floods occur every 3 years and not every 10 years", explains the researcher.
His vision also coincides with that of Jorge Guillén, who carries out his research at the ICM-CSIC. In the film, the expert explains that "there have been and will continue to be many Ebro deltas", since the ecosystem is in a phase of continuous transformation during which new balances are being reached.
In addition, Guillén stresses that in the Ebro delta changes are even more apparent since sedimentary contributions are very scarce due to a large number of dams and reservoirs distributed along the river. These infrastructures prevent the sediment from reaching the river mouth, which impedes the compensation of subsidence, sea level rise, and marine erosion.
All this has consequences for those working in the primary sector, but also for those who live off tourism and services, as Amparo Pérez, a lawyer from the Ebro delta, explains in the documentary: "the farmers and shellfish gatherers are the ones who come to me to do their tax returns, and those who then go to the hairdressers and cafés. When they do well, so do the others".
Faced with this scenario, the delta inhabitants have only one option left: learn to live with these changes. And this is how most of them are doing it. Dani Forcadell, a rice farmer in the delta for more than 25 years, explains it very well: "We are using a lot of technology to save water and phytosanitary products. Nowadays, running a hectare of rice means being more of a businessman than a farmer".
But they have no choice. Changes will continue to happen, and the only thing we can do is try not to accelerate them to leave room for both the delta and its people, who are the builders of this territory, to adapt. In the end, it is better to choose the changes than to let them be imposed, isn't it?