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Large scale changes in ecosystem service supply are expected across Europe as a result of changes in climate and land use, leading in most cases to increased vulnerability to reduced services provided (Metzger et al. 2006), especially in the Mediterranean region (Schröter et al. 2005). A multitude of human activities denoted direct drivers by Postel and Richter (2003), can have adverse impact on the freshwater environment and the resulting ecosystem services (see table 3.2). These activities generally represent the replacement of naturally functioning systems characterised by high levels of variability and resilience with more regulated systems engineered solely for human requirements (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment et al. 2005). Such regulations reduce the amount of freshwater available for ecosystems and the remaining water is subject to a highly unnatural regime. These activities reduce the resilience of naturally functioning systems to perturbation events, and in some cases this causes greater vulnerability to the society that depends upon those services that would act to mitigate and attenuate such events.

Table 3.2 Summary of direct drivers

Source: Postel and Richter 2003