Norwich 1000, 2000, 3000 AD

Think of a place.

How will it change in the next 1,000 years?

The lake at the University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK) is a suitable subject. Created from old floodplain meadows and fenland at Earlham Park in 1977, it is now an asset for leisure and wildlife enjoyed by locals as well as students. But what does the future hold for the lake and surrounding Park in a globally warming world?

I was asked to think about this question for the Art and Biodiversity Summer School 2013 at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, I was asked to lead a guided walks for tutors and young students, focusing on the changes to the environment in the years 1000, 2000, and 3000 AD.

The first two dates were easy enough to do. I started by reconstructing life in the Yare valley at Earlham in late Saxon times using historical and palaeo-environmental information. I then went on to look at present day environmental features. Making projections for the year 3000 was more of a challenge. I extrapolated from present trends, and was fascinated - and a bit shocked - by what I found.

See what you think.

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Changing landscapes in the Yare Valley, Earlham Park

1000 – 2000 – 3000 AD

An exercise in environmental reconstruction, analysis and conjecture

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The valley in 1000 AD

This is the late Saxon period in Norfolk. To reconstruct life at this time we can use environmental information contained in sediments from the Broads area as well as a archaeological evidence and a variety of historical sources. Many Norfolk people are direct descendants of those living here a thousand years ago.

• England has an agreeable climate. Research shows we are in the time of the Mediaeval Climatic Optimum (950 – 1100 AD; caused by a variation in solar output), although the temperatures were not quite as warm as the 20th century (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period).

• Relative sea levels have been falling since about 400 AD; in the seaward areas of the Broads the Upper Peat is being deposited in freshwater conditions over estuarine Middle Clay, while freshwater peat continues to be deposited up-river, as in this part of the Yare valley. This is related to the Great Estuary story (see http://www.enjoythebroads.com/discover/videos/great-estuary-story).

• The floodplain of the River Yare is likely to have been wider than it is today, including tracts of wet pasture, alder carr woodland, fen and probably also areas of natural open water (meres). Springs welling from the Chalk bedrock supply calcareous groundwater into the valley floor, promoting plants which favour alkaline conditions, including stonewort and watercress.

• This is the Anglo-Scandinavian period in Norfolk. Society is based on an agricultural subsistence economy within a manorial system which maintained a distinction between freemen and slaves. Most people are employed on the land. The villages of Earlham (Herela’s Estate), Bowthorpe (Boi’s Farm), Cringleford (Ford by the Round Hill), Colney (Cola’s Island) and Eaton (Farmstead by the River) had been founded by this time, with a mixture of English and Scandinavian elements in their names (Ekwall 1960). Vikings had settled in East Anglia after 870 and the Kingdom of East Anglia was under Danish control as part of the Danelaw until 920. Norwich was not a happy place at this time, being sacked and burned in 993, 1010 and 1014 during Danish invasions (Wade Martins 1984). These immigrants left traces of their settlement in local place names, such as Bowthorpe, Ashby and Kirby Bedon, and words such as ‘gate’ for street (e.g. Pottergate.). Danish settlement was a major spur for the development of Norwich (Rogerson 1998).

An Anglo-Saxon village at West Stow, Suffolk.  Image courtesy St Edmundsbury Borough Council

• It is likely that the area of what is now Earlham Park would have been a mosaic of farmland, grazing land and woodland on the valley slopes. The Domesday Book (1086) recorded 29 acres of meadow land in Earlham. Natural resources of the valley floor would have included fish and wildfowl, reed, withies, fibre plants, wood, peat, medicinal plants, and their exploitation would have contributed to shaping local biodiversity. Fishing was carried out with nets, spears and basket traps. Plants and animals were subjects of much folklore and popular superstition.

• There would have been peat cutting in the fen, which creates rectangular pools. Norwich was the 5th largest city in England at this time (Rogerson ibid), and so would have been a thriving market place for locally sourced peat for fuel.

Early growth of reeds amid alder carr woodland, at Blo’ Norton Fen, Norfolk.
The reed will be harvested later in the year.

• The wildlife would have had high biodiversity. Local species are likely to have included bittern, crane and osprey (Stevenson & Southwell 1890; Whitman 1898); beaver and wild cat (Yalden 1999); trout and eel. Wolves and bears had probably been exterminated in East Anglia by this time (Yalden ibid). There would have been highly diverse flora in the valley, particularly in open areas where reed and peat was cut (see Blo Norton and Thelnetham Fens SSSI today). Moths and butterflies, such as the swallowtail, are likely to have been abundant because of the ecological richness and lack of pesticides in the environment. The name of the River Yare itself has links with wildlife, as it was derived in Saxon times from the Romano-British Gariennus, which may be derived from a Celtic word Garannos, meaning heron or crane (Ekwall ibid).

• Malaria (known as ague or marsh fever) was endemic to the swampy parts of East Anglia.

1000 AD references and resources

o Ekwall, E (1960): The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names; 4th Edition, Oxford
o George, M (1992): The Land-use, Ecology and Conservation of Broadland; Packard, Chichester
o Greenoak, F (1981): All the Birds of the Air: Names, Lore and Literature of British Birds; Penguin
o Lacey, R & Danziger, D (2003): The Year 1000: An Englishman’s Year; Abacus
o Lambert, JM et al (1960): The Making of the Broads; Royal Geographical Society / John Murray.
o Open Domesday: The Domesday Book – see http://www.domesdaymap.co.uk/place/TG1908/earlham/
o Regia Anglorum: Fishing in Early Medieval Times – see http://www.regia.org/fishing.htm
o Rogerson, A (1998): Vikings and the new East Anglian towns; British Archaeology, vol.35 – see http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba35/ba35regs.html
o Stevenson, HS & Southwell, T (1890): The Birds of Norfolk; Gurney & Jackson.
o Wade Martins, S (1984): A History of Norfolk; Phillimore
o Whitman, CH (1898): The Birds of Old English Literature; Illinois – see http://archive.org/details/cu31924031439544
o Yalden, D (1999): The History of British Mammals; Poyser.

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The valley in 2000 AD

To understand the present day environment in the valley we need to trace its changes over the last few centuries and relate them to present day biological records and environmental information. We are in the opening phase of the Anthropocene Epoch, in which human activities are intentionally and unintentionally modifying natural processes. The start of the Anthropocene may be dated to 1784, with the invention of James Watt’s steam engine which powered the Industrial Revolution and has led to escalating fossil fuel use.

• In 2000 AD, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere measured 370 parts per million (ppm), driven by burning of fossil fuels and emissions of methane which been rising since the beginning of the industrial period (global pre-industrial C02 levels were 280 ppm). 

• The impact of land drainage over the past 200 years has lowered water levels in the valley, leading to progressive drying out and wastage of peat land on the floodplain. This means that land levels in the valley are lower and the floodplain is somewhat narrower than it used to be.

• The water levels in the river are now artificially regulated by weirs and dams, for example downstream at Cringleford Mill and Keswick Mill.

• Springs and seeps from chalk bedrock supply calcareous groundwater into the valley floor. However the impact of pesticides (fungicides, herbicides, insecticides), artificial fertilisers and sewage effluent has altered the chemical composition of the ground and surface water in the Yare valley over the last 60 years, leading to elevated nutrient levels and diffuse systemic poisoning which is thought to be affecting biodiversity. See for example http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20130618-50367.html.

• This is the post-industrial period in Norfolk. Society is organised within a consumer-capitalist economy, and most of the industrial activity which supports it takes place abroad. Mechanisation means that very few people are employed in agriculture; most are employed in service industries. The Lake is maintained as a leisure amenity area, notably for walking, recreational angling and exercising dogs; it is not used as a subsistence resource for the local population. The 2011 census shows that 12.9 % of the Norwich population (17,094 people) were recorded as having been born outside the UK.

• The 1st edition OS map shows us what the area was like a century ago. The land where the Lake now is was fen land or damp grazing meadows subject to seasonal flooding. This is similar what we see today west of the Heronry (UEA Marsh CWS 1447), across the river in Cringleford meadows and upstream at Earlham Marsh (CWS 1451) and Bowthorpe Marsh nature reserve.

The site of the Lake, from a first edition Ordnance Survey map c.1888, showing tracts
of fenland and carr woodland in the Yare valley. There is evidence of artificial straightening
of the river channel. Image courtesy Norfolk Heritage Explorer.

• Alder and willow trees are fringing the Lake. These are typical of the carr woodland seen on parts of the Yare floodplain nearby, as on the other bank of the river at Cringleford Wood. Areas of such woodland may have been more extensive in past centuries. Grazing meadows and fens tend to become woodland if neglected or the ground is allowed to dry out.

• The floodplain was modified by gravel extraction to create an artificial lake in 1977, introducing open water habitat to this part of the Yare valley, and quarry spoil was spread over the floodplain in the area west of the Lake, giving rise to an elevated area of thorny scrub woodland today. There are other examples of pits at Colney and Bawburgh gravel pits upstream. Although the Lake is a County Wildlife Site (CWS 1449 UEA Broad), it is not counted as Biodiversity Action Plan Habitat, unlike others in Earlham Park (e.g Wet Woodland, Lowland Fens, Reedbeds).  A shallower lake would be better for biodiversity.

• Biological recording by members of the Norfolk & Norwich Naturalists’ Society is gathering baseline information about species by which future changes to biodiversity can be evaluated.

• Immigrant species have been introduced over the last 1,000 years through deliberate and accidental releases. These include American mink, Canada goose, grey squirrel (native range originally North America), collared dove (western Asia), common carp (eastern Europe), Egyptian goose (Africa), little owl (Europe / Asia), muntjac (South Asia). Immigrant flora include Canadian pondweed (North America) and Himalayan balsam (India). The red-eared terrapin is an immigrant reptile (native to southern North America).

The Lake, looking from the western end, with White Water Lily in the foreground.
The water is too deep for water plants to thrive, except close to the edges.

• Migrant bird species recorded at the Lake link it with different parts of the world: overwintering in Africa (swallow, cetti’s warbler, common sandpiper, cuckoo, willow warbler), breeding in the Boreal forest and tundra zone of northern Eurasia (brambling, fieldfare, goldeneye, red-throated diver, shorteared owl, siskin, waxwing, woodcock). Other species move about seasonally as the need arises, e.g. because of bad winters, for example Moorhen (from Holland), Goosander (from Scandinavia).

• Resident species form the core of the Lake’s wildlife assemblage at all times of the year. As ever, local populations are in flux according to habitat loss, weather, predation, pollution and other factors. Small tortoiseshell butterflies used to be common on nettles and are now becoming rare in southern England, thought to be due to predation by an immigrant parasitoid fly. The swallowtail butterfly is now rare because its caterpillars only feed on the plant milk parsley found in fens, now a dwindling habitat. The common frog is threatened by a virus and a fungus whose spread may be linked to global warming.

• Colonisation of this newly created water feature by plants and animals is still continuing. Some native species have returned to the area following persecution and hunting, for example otter, goshawk, little egret.

• Local inhabitants no longer suffer from marsh fever (malaria), because of improved drainage and marsh land reclamation in the C19th and C20th. The nickname of Norwich City football team (The Canaries) is said to have originated in a joke about the jaundiced complexion of Norfolk men caused by this disease.

2000 AD references and resources

o County Wildlife Sites in Norfolk - http://www.norfolkwildlifetrust.org.uk/Wildlife-in-Norfolk/Habitat-explorer/County-Wildlife-Sites.aspx
o Norfolk Emap Explorer – http://www.historic-maps.norfolk.gov.uk/mapexplorer/
o Norfolk Heritage Explorer – http://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/
o Species records for UEA Broad from the Norfolk Biodiversity Information Service - http://www.nbis.org.uk/
o UK Biodiversity Action Plan Priority Habitats - http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-5706
o Wildlife sites and species from the National Biodiversity Network Gateway - http://data.nbn.org.uk/

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The valley in 3000 AD

A thousand years is very little in geological time, but at least 40 generations in human time. The Yare valley of the year 3000 is likely to look very different from today; we shall clearly be in the Anthropocene Epoch. While we cannot be sure what local details will be like, we can project something of the wider environmental changes which are likely to set the scene for the local ecology. To guess the elements of the biological and cultural environment in the Yare valley at the dawn of the 4th millennium means analysing and extrapolating present trends into a range of potential scenarios. Factors include the burning of fossil fuels (gas, coal, oil), shifts in biodiversity, the impact of human population growth, shifts in land-use, the likelihood of conflict and warfare, technological changes including the growth of biotechnology, growing resource depletion notably soil and water, the possibility of catastrophic events such as volcanic eruptions, and even the possibility of human extinction.

What follows is a conjectural reconstruction based on present trends, enlivened by some imaginative interpretation.

• The closest historical analogue we have for the predicted climate over the next century is the Mid-Pliocene warm period c. 3 million years ago. CO2 values are estimated to have reached 360–440 parts per million, and global mean annual temperatures were approximately 3 deg C higher than today (Salzmann et al 2009). 
  
  However, for 3000 AD, the closest climatic analogue we have for the planet is the early Eocene Epoch, c.50 million years ago, when the world was much hotter and there little or no ice at the poles. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum/.

• In our imagined scenario, fossil fuel consumption continued through the 21st century, notably coal use in China, although peak oil production occurred as early as 2022. The resulting global warming/heating lasted for five centuries before the climate slowly reached an equilibrium state in the 27th century. It caused deglaciation of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and thermal expansion of the oceans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise), leading to sea-level rise of over 6 metres. Low-lying coastal areas of Norfolk were inundated and there was a corresponding landward shift of wetland environments. An estuarine environment now extends up the Yare valley as far as Bowthorpe (http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/), with fringing mud flats and saltmarshes.

• The average global temperature in 3000 is over 6 deg C warmer than today. Thus, the average annual temperature in the UK may be comparable with southern Spain today. (http://www.climate-charts.com/World-Climate-Maps.html#temperature). However, in this imagined scenario dangerous exponential global heating has not occurred (c.f. Wasdell 2007). If it had, we would be envisaging a catastrophic scenario.

• Carbon dioxide levels are much higher than today’s levels, at over 1500 parts per million. (In 2013 the Mauna Loa observatory records broke the 400 ppm barrier; global pre-industrial levels were 280 ppm.) At these levels, the area would be experiencing a climate approaching those of the early Eocene Epoch (50 million years ago) see http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=1380 (n.b. peak Eocene levels were 2000 ppm (http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/35021000?locale=en).

• Atmospheric methane levels are likely to be higher than today. Forcing factors over the 3rd millennium included release of methane hydrates in the ocean and melting of tundra permafrost due to global warming; there was also a volcanic eruption (perhaps in Iceland). This resulted in abrupt shifts in global climatic patterns and amplified positive feedback loops in the weather systems, which lead to several centuries of intense weather instability. Methane levels stabilised after 2400 due to natural attenuation., but remained at concentrations eight times pre-industrial levels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum; Sloan et al 2000).

• Unstable weather has become normal, with periods of drought and dust storms alternating with bouts of intense rainfall. This has led to widespread loss of topsoil and extensive gullying of farmland. As a result, much agriculture is now carried out using artificial media under shelter.

• Wildlife is different from that of today. Some Norfolk species were able to respond to the challenges of climate change by shifting their geographical distributions and life-cycles; others became extinct both locally and globally. Heightened temperature and CO2 levels mean that plant growth rates are now enhanced, and fungi, bacteria and algae different from today form the base of the trophic pyramid. Immigrant species typical of Mediterranean, African and Asian habitats today have become established, particularly hardy plants, insects and spiders. These include the malarial mosquitoes Anopheles atroparvus, which breeds in warm, brackish water along river estuaries. However, overall biodiversity has been grossly reduced, with fewer species forming the bulk of the biomass, including those resistant to pesticides and other environmental stresses. Many genetically engineered feral and mutant species are present in the environment.

Drought-resisting Mediterranean plants such as the pistachio 

may be at home in Norfolk in 3000 AD.

• Catastrophic changes to marine life occurred in the 3rd millennium, with the cumulative impacts of ocean acidification and warming, over-fishing and pollution contributing to ecosystem collapse in the North Sea, ecological phase shifting, and the rise of algal and jellyfish blooms. The effects can still be seen in 3000 AD in the ecology of the Yare estuary, which has a deeply impoverished fauna compared with 2000 AD.

• Globalised human society has undergone radical transformations. Rapid social evolution and much migration of populations has taken place in step with the forcing effects of environmental change, resource depletion, population growth, disease and an increasingly hostile and unpredictable climate. For instance, an influx of refugees from drought-stricken lands bordering the Mediterranean led to 37% of the Norfolk population being of Spanish and North African descent by 2200. Natural Malthusian processes have acted to control the human population through various decades of disease and starvation; this was particularly true in the aftermath of an Icelandic volcanic eruption in the early 23rd century, which caused a Volcanic Winter lasting nine years and triggered increased global warming feedbacks in the climate system. In 2000 the world population was just over 6 billion, and this climbed to 9 billion by 2040, boosted by continuing use of fossil fuels and genetically engineered foodstuffs. Birth control policies were finally implemented in the 2100s and again in the 2700s, and the world population has now successfully been returned to what it was in the year 1950, and is now artificially maintained at that level.

• A variety of technical solutions to the problems of human life have been attempted, which imitate the functional logic of biological systems through biotech engineering, including bio-robotics and chlorophyll technology. The result is sustainable modular hive technology which guarantees human life is tolerable for the majority within certain limits. The recycling of water, nutrients and wastes are key considerations. Fabricated nutrients are an important component of human diet. What happens in the environment beyond the hive is a matter of general indifference to the human population; biodiversity is no longer a meaningful value. Biological entities are now valued in functional terms as sources of useful information and material resources to mitigate the effects of living on the depleted planet.

• Erlem is part of the Hub City of Norrich. The old UEA site was reclaimed in 2287 following the destruction of its buildings in the Third Boreal War a century earlier, which had been fought over the allocation of scarce water resources. The site was then used for hydroponic cultivation, and drew its fluid from the Yeh Estuary. An entry in the Solicon Archive for 2654 shows that the site was used as a location for a new Chlorofusion Reactor to power the Eton Sub. The view of the valley in 3000 is of an estuarine landscape seen through hot, misty air; a series of low buildings and plant growing installations line the valley sides. Biodiversity is dominated by hardy plants and insects; some herbivorous and insectivorous birds and small mammals are able to thrive in set-aside wilderness strips. The few trees permitted living space are those which been designed or selected for their functional value, and they are arranged in plantations sheltered by awnings and irrigated by a water collection system; rainfall is too erratic and violent for unsheltered and untended trees to survive.

Artificial food production, from the film ‘Soylent Green’ 

(dir. Richard Fleischer, USA 1973). Image courtesy http://www.dvdbeaver.com

• A tall stone monument to Old Earth was erected in the centre of Norrich in 2128, and its remains are still visible in 3000. The stonework has been eroded by acidic rainfall, and the lettering is poorly legible. It shows a vertical scale marked with a series of global CO2 concentration levels linked with dates. The design is topped with a stone ball chiselled in the likeness of the planet, and the side and back panels are carved with a profusion of interlaced plant and animal species, most of which are unfamiliar to the city’s inhabitants.

• Three attempts were made to colonise polar areas of the planet Mars in the 22nd century. Norrich contributed three couples to one of the expeditions. Each colony was abandoned after a few decades because of supply difficulties, psychological problems among the colonists and the adverse environment (Mars Colony II was buried by a dust storm). It is now generally accepted that planet Earth is the only viable home for the human species.

3000 AD references and resources

o International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme: Have we entered the Anthropocene? – see http://www.igbp.net/5.d8b4c3c12bf3be638a8000578.html
o National Geographic (2004): Six Degrees Could Change The World – Video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKo4TSq40l0
o Lynas, M (2004): Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet; Harper Perennial
o Mitchell, D (2004): Cloud Atlas; Sceptre
o Reiter, P (2000): From Shakespeare to Defoe: Malaria in England in the Little Ice Age; Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol.6, No.1 – see http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/6/1/00-0101_article.htm
o Salzmann, U, Haywood, AM and Lunt, DJ (2009): The past is the guide to the future? Comparing Middle Pliocene vegetation with predicted biome ditributions for the twenty-first century; Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 367
o Sloan, CL, Huber, H & Ewing, A (2000): Polar stratospheric cloud forcing in a greenhouse world; in: Abrantes, F & Mix, A 2000: Reconstructing the Ocean History; Springer Verlag
o Warrick et al (1990): The greenhouse effect and its implications for the European Community; Commission of the European Communities
o Wasdell, D (2007): Feedback Dynamics and the Acceleration of Climate Change; APPCCG – see http://www.apollo-gaia.org/BaliandBeyond.htm
o World Bank (2012): Turn Down The Heat - Why a 4 deg C warmer world must be avoided – see http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/11/18/Climate-change-report-warns-dramatically-warmer-world-this-century

‘Norwich in AD 2035 - A prophetic fantasy’, by WT Watling 
(Norwich Almanac and Record, 1935). Image courtesy Norfolk Record Office

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© Tim Holt-Wilson, July 2013

Photos THW, unless otherwise credited

Well Shrimps in Norfolk

Picture the scene: a bright day in March; I am standing beside a road in Thetford Forest, near West Harling in Norfolk, in the company of my friend Ian Sanders. Beech and pine trees surround us, with sandy topsoil underfoot - grass and leaf litter, with occasional flints and lumps of chalk poking through - it's a typical patch of Breckland forest soil over chalk bedrock. Nearby, somewhat incongruously, a black steel pipe is sticking out of the ground with the letters TL98SE6 painted on it. We are taking a woodland walk, but what brings us to this place is something completely invisible.

A few weeks earlier I had chanced upon a comment in 'The Water Supply of Norfolk' by William Whitaker (1921).

In 1899, Sir S. F. Harmer recorded the occurrence of the wellshrimp, Niphargus, in the well at his father's house, at Cringleford, the well (then about 25 years old) being 40 feet deep, in chalk, overlain by 2 or 3 feet of humus. This is the first record of the animal in East Anglia. Trans. Norf. Nat. Soc. vol. vi, pt. 5, p. 489.

I had never heard of well shrimps before. It found it extraordinary that something might be thriving in the cold gloom of a domestic well.

Wells have always fascinated me, though the sense of dread I felt in their presence as a child has abated. Our house was surrounded by them: one near the kitchen door, one beside the scullery door, and another facing the big lawn, and yet another next to the garages. Our domestic water supply was electrically pumped from one (the deepest of all, they said, reaching down into the Chalk) near the back door to fill a tank in the loft. Each well had its own hand pump cased in wood with an iron  handle. I imagined the paving over them might give way and I would fall into a terrible dark and be lost. The worst well of all, however, lay in the walled garden next to a crumbling greenhouse. It was covered by a disused and rotting door. Mr Willimot the gardener pulled it off one day and showed me what was underneath: a staring black hole with a cold, clinging smell. I kicked some pebbles and they plopped into infinite nothingness. I felt sorry for what I had done to them - I was too afraid to look down.

The well at Gimingham Hall Farm, northeast Norfolk

Snape Hill, Rickinghall, 1911. There is a well somewhere beneath Gt Gt Uncle Leonard.

I decided to find out more about well shrimps. They are small, blind, colourless crustaceans inhabiting groundwater and known to science as Niphargids. As it turns out, hardly anyone has heard of them; they are an invisible part of Britain's biodiversity in more ways than one. The first recorded specimen in England was found in the well at Bart's Hospital, London, in 1812. Further examples of these stygobitic ('styx-living'), hypogeal ('beneath the earth') crustacea were identified in wells and caves in the 19th century, including Niphargus kochianus, N. fontanus and N.aquilex; all three have since been found living in East Anglia. The most widespread is N.kochianus, which lives in the Chalk (Proudlove et al, 2003).

They could still be living at Cringleford, although there are no records of them since 1899. If they do survive, they will be inhabiting a tranquil world of silent, aqueous darkness, their generations troubled only by the moon's gravitational pull, the shifting water levels in the aquifer and perhaps a whiff of modern groundwater pollution. Their life-world is a secret one, distant from our overworld, and as strange as science fiction. One can expect to find anaemic salamanders and eyeless fish deep in Mexican and Pyrenean caves, but nothing so strange beneath the rolling terrain of Norfolk. They are thought to feed microscopic plant and animal detritus, much of it washed down from the overworld [1], and also bacteria [2]. They don't need daylight. They shimmer through joints and fissures in the sunless bedrock.

Niphargus kochianus kochianus. Image courtesy Lee Knight @ http://hcrs.freshwaterlife.org/

A recent chalk groundwater observation project by the British Geological Survey has involved sampling the water and checking it for stygobites. Many specimens were found. A research project has analysed their genetic diversity and has thrown up some surprising conclusions. Niphargids have been living in Britain for at least 19.5 million years, making them the country's oldest known inhabitants. They are thought to have survived freezing conditions in the Ice Age by living deep beneath the permafrost layer. Until recently zoologists assumed they had only managed to survive south of the ice sheet margins or had recolonised from the continent once the ice had retreated.

Louise Maurice of the British Geological Survey collected nine specimens of N.kochianus from West Harling in 2011. She netted the water in a 38 metre (125 ft) deep borehole in the chalk called TL98SE6, using cheese as the favoured bait. The evidence of molecular genetics suggests that kochianus first diverged from its continental ancestors and became a separate species in late Pliocene times, about 2.9 million years ago (McInerney et al, 2014). It has been living in the chalk of southern Britain ever since.

Standing here in the forest near TL98SE6, I am pleased to know that the vast thickness of chalk bedrock beneath me is not a lifeless dimension. There are living beings down there. The groundwater is inhabited space: another habitat, another facet of Earth's biodiversity. Perhaps there were Niphargids in the spooky wells of my childhood. I somehow find this thought comforting.

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References:

1. 'Hypogean Crustacea ecology' - http://hcrs.freshwaterlife.org/ecology [accessed April 2014].
2. Dr Jonathan Grey, pers. comm.

For more information about stygobites in the UK see:

• McInerney, C. et al (2014): The ancient Britons: groundwater fauna survived extreme climate change over tens of millions of years across NW Europe; Molecular Ecology, no.23.
• Proudlove, G.S. et al (2003): A review of the status and distribution of the subterranean aquatic Crustacea of Britain and Ireland; Cave and Karst Science, vol.30, no.2.
• Robertson, A.L. et al, 2008 - A review of the subterranean aquatic ecology of England and Wales - Environment Agency Science report SC030155/SR20.
• Sorensen, J.P.R. (2013): Using Boreholes as Windows into Groundwater Ecosystems; PLoS ONE 8(7): e70264. 

Also:

• Groundwater Animals UK project report 
• Groundwater ecology and biodiversity (BGS research programme)
• Groundwatwer ecology: extending our understanding of groundwater biodiversity (presentation by Louise Maurice, BGS)
• The Ancient Britons: Shrimp-like animals have survived millions of years in groundwater (BGS press release, 2014)
• The Hypogean Crustacean Recording Scheme (UK Niphargid species data)
• www.niphargus.info (in-depth information about the Niphargids of Europe)

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With thanks to Dr Dan Hoare, Dr Lee Knight, Dr Louise Maurice and Prof Anne Robertson for their information.

Goblin's Gold

I managed to pick up a copy of Dixon's 'Bryophytes of the Pleistocene' yesterday for £15. I know very little about mosses, but while looking through it for information relevant to East Anglia I came across an intriguing reference. A few fragments of the moss Schistostega pennata had been found stuffed into the socket of a late Bronze Age spear head at Aylsham, Norfolk, about 1969. The find was part of a hoard thought to be the cache of an itinerant bronzesmith.

Socketed spearhead with leaf-shaped blade, as found 
at Aylsham. Source: 'Bronze Age Metalwork in Norwich 
Castle Museum'; Norfolk Museums Service, 1977; fig.36

The author raises his bryological eyebrows: "This discovery is of outstanding interest...  Schistostega is a minute species with a unique habitat. It grows in areas which never receive direct sunlight, and where light intensity is very low, such as caves, mine shafts and deep fissures". He quotes the excavator's report, which discusses the possible ways by which fragments of this rare moss may have entered the socket. He concludes: "There remains the possibility that Schistostega had magical significance. Another record in a similar context is greatly to be desired".

I was keen to find out more about this moss with magical overtones. Dixon says its only known East Anglian locality was Wolferton, west Norfolk. A Google search brought up interesting facts. Schistostega is adapted to live in dim, shady places, particularly on acidic bedrock such as sandstone. It has clear, lens-like spherical cells that are able to concentrate light onto a cluster of chloroplasts; they also reflect this incident light, creating a greenish glow. It is a plant with interesting cultural associations. It is called drakguldmossa, 'dragon's gold moss' in Sweden; 'light moss' in Norway and Germany (lysmose and leuchtmoos); musco luminoso, 'luminous moss' in Spain; 'goblin's gold' in England.  

Image source:
http://www.vm.ntnu.no/mose/index.php/2012/12/02/2-desember-lysmose/

As we peer into the dark recess of some rocky crevice, the moss is seen to glimmer enchantingly. With a slight change of the viewer's position the effect is lost, and the scene reverts to dull obscurity. Small wonder the ancient imagination embroidered tantalising tales of fairy gold shining underground.

As the Rev. M. Berkeley put it in his 'Handbook of British mosses' (1863): "A most lovely little moss, sometimes illuminating the caves where it grows with a golden light".

From: Berkeley, Rev. M. (1863): Handbook of British mosses; comprising all that
are known to be natives of the British Isles; Lovell Reeve & Co, London. Fig. 14.
Image courtesy http://delta-intkey.com/britms/www/schistos.htm

The excavator of the hoard concluded that a few strands of the moss may have found their way into the spear's socket when it was perhaps "concealed within an environment suitable for the moss". There are no sandstone crevices around Aylsham; the closest suitable geological context would be the Lower Cretaceous sandstones in west Norfolk. My friend Robin Stevenson (West Norfolk Moss Recorder) tells me that there is only one know site for Schistostega in Norfolk, and this is in a deep cleft in a sandstone rock face at Wolferton, near Sandringham. He suspects it was introduced from elsewhere in Britain by birds.

Photo courtesy CR Stevenson

The Aylsham specimen is most likely to have been brought to Norfolk by our itinerant bronzesmith along with his scrap metalwork. Perhaps he had travelled from the acidic bedrock districts of the West Midlands, Cornwall or Wales, as shown in the current UK distribution map for this species. We note that Cornwall was an important source of bronze in prehistoric times.

"There remains the possibility that Schistostega had magical significance", says Dixon.

Imagine the wonder-working smiths and miners of the Bronze Age, delving tin and copper ore from underground, transmuting it with fire, shaping into powerful tools. We are told that the father of the Celtic smith god was the sun god Belenos. The moss may have been magically associated with solar wealth found underground.

Imagine that, three thousand years ago, copper miners noticed it shining in the shadows of their tunnel entrances.

Perhaps imagine that somebody looking into a rocky crevice caught sight of a cached hoard of bronze metalwork. Around it glowed the uncanny light of Schistostega pennata. The golden bronze was lightly patinated with verdigris; the moss was glowing like pale green fire.

Tall stories and sacred myths may be embroidered from associations such as these.

Goblin's gold.

A sandstone outcrop in the Sandringham Sand Formation
at Wolferton, Norfolk.

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For more information about Goblin's Gold:

• http://www.vm.ntnu.no/mose/index.php/2012/12/02/2-desember-lysmose/
• http://www.bryoecol.mtu.edu/chapters/9-5LightCave.pdf
• http://delta-intkey.com/britms/www/schistos.htm 

For the archaeological report on the Aylsham Hoard:

• Clough, T. H. M. (1971): A Hoard of Late Bronze Age Metalwork from Aylsham, Norfolk; Norfolk Archaeology. Vol XXXV Pt II, pp 159-169.

A snowflake

Image by Alexey Kljatov
courtesy http://www.demilked.com/macro-snowflakes-diy-camera-alexey-kljatov/

I see something beautiful here which draws my thoughts as well as my senses. Looking into the pattern makes me realise that what we are seeing here is the perceptible expression of water's invisible power (ability? potential?) to structure itself in a certain way when temperature drops below zero deg C. I'm having difficulty finding the words here.

Reading into such patterning, we understand that  everything in the world - at its root, core or kernel - whether living or non-living -  is patterned, and there is something which makes it so. We can see the results expressed in the world of perceptible phenomena, although we cannot directly examine whatever it is that generated it. We just see its effects.

This is the core of Schopenhauer's philosophical distinction between the Phenomenon and the Noumenon. The one is the perceptible representation of the other. He says the Noumenon is the 'Will to Life', and if so a crystal shares this noumenal will or energy as much as a leaf, a beetle - or me.

To explain such patterning in nature people may fall back on analogies with particularly human abilities of intricate creation and fabrication, suggesting it betrays the hand of a supernatural, transcendent fabricator - a Creator. They colour the workings of the Universe with human attributes. Plato suggested that nature followed transcendent templates called 'Forms' or 'Ideas' which existed in an imperceptible, transcendent, ideal reality. The world of phenomena (substantial, perceptible things) was just a pale shadow of these Forms. Thus Plato makes a conceptual separation between Form and Substance, Pattern and Material. However our perception of phenomena does not make such separations: we experience them through our five senses and translate them into a holistic and meaningful synthesis. We are the creators of our perceptions.

Physicists point to inherent mathematical properties in matter and material processes which make patterning a fact of the Universe. Snowflake patterns can be expressed as mathematical equations. Liquids have a tendency to flow in meandering patterns, whether on Earth or on Mars, and these too can be expressed as mathematical equations. I suspect that only mathematicians can fully experience phenomena in this way.

Perhaps it must be left to ordinary human experience to appreciate, and to the arts to reveal, the obscure - yet strongly felt - meanings that are inherent in nature's patterning. Schopenhauer would say they are generated by the 'Will to Life' as it is manifests itself in the Universe. The beauty of snowflakes points into the creative heart of physis, of nature itself - uniquely perceived and wondered at by humans.

Clouds

7-11-2013

Clouds...

Cauliflowers?

Clouds don't fit easily into words. All we have is metaphors, and what we see in the sky's vapour to go on.

A fallstreak hole at Brome, near Eye, Suffolk, UK; 2007

We may talk of 'complexions' of cloud, perhaps, searching for words to evoke their subtleties. We may identify them as fragments, rags or shreds, or see them as cumulative entities like masses or mounds, or even cauliflowers.

Back-lit cumulonimbus near Hoxne, Suffolk, UK; Nov. 2013.

I first heard Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' when I was 18. I was thunder-struck. The record cost £0.50 from a charity shop. A new world of musical energy unfolded from its dark grooves. I particularly remember one day in my 21st year, stacking hay bales on a hill at my mother's farm in Devon. I watched cloud castles towering up in the west, beyond the upland bulk of Dartmoor and tracking towards me in the hot summer air. They trailed shadows across the rounded contours of the South Hams landscape, its hazy patchwork of woods and fields. That was when the music in my head took external form; I can still hear its shape and relive the whole atavistic ballet of that summer's rolling cloudscape.

Perhaps our daily selves never really see clouds; we just see bits of them, the bit that takes our fancy: the camel, weasel or whale that speaks to us out of the fog (as Shakepeare's Hamlet put it), or perhaps we respond to the epic in their forms. Faced with their mad diversity, we taxonomise them - however poetically in Latin - into mental categories: Stratocumulus stratiformis perlucidus,we say, or Cirrus fibratus intortus. As with every phenomenon, the essence of clouds eludes us in words - for essence is about identity and identity is about difference, and clouds are 'process' made visible.

Faced with their nebulous beauty, we name them, but perhaps the best we can ever do is to turn them into paintings or music - or philosophy.

Tracking stratocumulus castellanus near Hoxne, Suffolk, UK; Nov. 2013.
Listen to JS Bach: St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244); No. 47 - Aria: 'Erbarme dich, mein Gott'
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBeXF_lnj_M -

For Arthur Schopenhauer, clouds are a metaphor for understanding a truth about existence (see 'The World as Will & Representation' Book 1, chapter 35). Like river water or ice patterns on a window pane, the cloud shapes we see are representations of essential forces which take phenomenal shape in the moment: the atmosphere's passing variations in temperature, pressure and humidity made visible and 'objectified' and thus nameable. Schopenhauer invites us to look through such natural phenomena towards the invisible generative forces and energies (what he calls 'will') that they represent. He also invites us to look inwards and understand the cloudy nature of our own 'Will to Life', its forces and energies, made manifest through our selves considered as phenomena.

Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' taps into the cloudy realm of our own dark matter.

Cumulonimbus tracking over the North Sea, Shingle Street, Suffolk, UK; Oct. 2013

Living lightly

She arrives when I am on the terrace eating lunch outdoors: a flicker of movement among the plant pots, a sally then a quick dash for cover with a rustle of leaves.

She is fearless and fearful in equal measure: sudden in her activities, opportunistic in her adventures, reticent in her habits.

Her coat is a rich chestnut brown; her eyes are little beads of vigilance.

The terrace must seem as wide as a playing field for her: an open heath carpeted with moss and shaded by groups of tall, thin trees, the vervain plants growing there. Looking up, she will see the last of their mauve flowers burning out like high fuses overhead, the final glow of summer.

I know nothing of her home. I imagine a chamber full of dry grass and leaves, perhaps down the hole of the storm-water drain, a tunnel floored with dark alluvium, but surely prone to regular flooding. Perhaps she lives more securely up in the eaves, only a short, two-metre climb away. I hear sounds up there some evenings.

I throw hazel nuts towards her. These are hard balls of future food to be stored, not eaten. She stocks some of them in a red earthenware tower, a length of old field drain standing end-up beside the house wall; she disappears down it then reappears a moment later, empty handed. I have no idea how many she has stocked in there; I hesitate before disturbing her projects.

Sometimes she sits watching me, the terrible giant in her world, but when I get up and move around or shift her landmarks - pots, ornaments and plants - she's gone.

I can see the power that I - a human - might have over her. It is quite disturbing. I have the power to share food with, rearrange the living space - or even end the life of - a bank vole.

Surely ethics has its origin in an awareness of the power we might have in the life-world of an Other.

Everything

"Everything we think we know about the world is a model".

          - Donella H. Meadows: 'Thinking in Systems: A Primer' (Routledge; 2009)

Subject-Object

I am seated outside my front door in the sunlight, reading.

"Our most immediate experience of things... is necessarily an experience of reciprocal encounter - of tension, communication and commingling". (1)

I glance up suddenly, aware of being observed. A grey squirrel is draped along the ridge of the roof, warming itself in the sun, watching me. I give a low whistle; its head is quizzically raised for a moment.

Awareness is aware of me.

Bacon

"Only by affirming the animateness of perceived things do we allow our words to emerge directly from the depths of our ongoing reciprocity with the world" (ibid). 
.
David Abram suggests we must decentre our perception from seeing things in subject-object terms, and recentre them in the primordial connection we have with the life-world, and our symbiosis with it.
.
But what about the subject-object dichotomy? Isn't it central to perceiving and knowing things factually? Where would Science and the Enlightenment project be, since Galileo and Bacon, without objectivity?

Abram and the phenomenologists recognise that by trying to represent the world we inevitably forfeit its direct presence.

"It was Husserl's genius to realise that the assumption of objectivity had led to an almost total eclipse of the life-world in the modern era, to a nearly complete forgetting of this living dimension... In their striving to attain a finished blueprint for the world, the sciences had become frightfully estranged from our direct human experience." (2).

However the objective way of seeing the world, and the achievements of science, are rooted in subjectivity.

"The striving for objectivity is understood, phenomenologically, as a striving to achieve greater consensus among a plurality of subjects... The pure 'objective reality' commonly assumed by modern science, far from being the concrete basis underlying all experience was, according to Husserl, a theoretical construction, an unwarranted idealisation of intersubjective experience". (3)

Science is thus an intersubjective project, the product of competition and consensus-building between scientists as subjectivities. This is a radical position, which gathers both subjective and objective modes of experiencing reality into its orbit. Husserl considers intersubjectivity to be the grounding for a new, truly scientific philosophy.

"The intrinsically first being, the being that precedes and bears every worldly Objectivity, is transcendental intersubjectivity".[4]

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[1] David Abram: 'The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World'; Vintage Books, 1997; p56). 
[2] Ibid, p41.
[3] Ibid, p38.
[4] Edmund Husserl: 'Cartesian Meditations'; Martinus Nijhof, 1970; chapter 64).

The lives of others

A squirrel is busy retrieving acorns - a small hole in the grass, the husk of the acorn lying beside it = the evidence. New potholes appear on the lawn every few days. She presumably locates her buried treasure by smell: I have often seen her sniffing about the grass, and she often has mud on paws and nose. I don't think I can attribute great feats of memory to her however - grey squirrels cannot match the astounding Clark's Nutcracker in North America, which may recover 70% of its cached nuts from a territory of over 100 square miles (see article). Every year I have several oak seedlings sprouting from the lawn, which have presumably grown from the acorns that have escaped her or her fellows.

I am reminded how important smell is in the non-human world. The beetle which flies heavily past me in the garden is unlikely to be pursuing a random path. The ants which forage among the grass stems are following scented tracks laid by their fellows; the closer they come to their native ant-heap, the stronger and more reassuring must be the smell of home. The voles have their runs in the undergrowth. The moorhens are patrolling their part of the garden, reinforcing an invisible territorial boundary between their domain and that of the moorhens on the back pond.  The rabbits have taken to sitting on top of the ant-hill on the lawn, and crapping there, making a pile of hraka, as Richard Adams might have put it.

My garden has places and spaces with meaning of which I know nothing. It is filled with tracks, trails, signs and boundaries; if I could read them all I would be astounded - and completely overwhelmed with the quantity and complexity of the information. I just filter out what is important to me - and the other inhabitants do the same.