Models from ecohydrology and hydrobiology can inform our human future

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Freshwater problems link a future ‘perfect storm’ of climate change, self-inflicted problems of health and economics in the developed world, poverty, overpopulation, and disease in the developing world, and, most fundamentally, conversion of most former land biomes to anthromes: human-dominated, agricultural and urban systems, with consequent diminution of regulatory ecosystem services. Biological processes regulate the compositions of the ocean and atmosphere, such that a band of equable temperatures has prevailed for millions of years. Biomes self-regulate through natural selection of their components; no comparable engineered system is tested so rigorously. Anthromes offer provisioning and cultural services but almost none of the fundamental regulatory services that biomes provide, and then only to the extent that biomes underpin them.Engineering of biomes to multiple-use anthromes has steadily eroded their long-term value in favour of short-term wealth creation. When they have deteriorated, we have converted more biome to compensate. This can never be sustainable and the remaining area of biome is inadequate to provide sustained regulatory services. As well as our limiting carbon emissions severely to mitigate our problems, large areas of present anthromes will need to be restored to natural biomes, the human footprint confined to much smaller areas, and our engineering talents devoted to making human societies thrive in the latter. We are a clever species and can solve these problems, but only if the selfish interests of the rich and powerful in particular, and if the self-interest of our minds, itself paradoxically determined by natural selection, can be curbed.