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Recent environmental changes inferred from sediments in a shallow lake of the Argentinian pampas

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Abstract

The Pampas are fertile lowland plains that extend across east-central Argentina and are renowned for their agricultural importance. The low geomorphologic relief of the region accounts for the occurrence of numerous shallow lakes whose sediments constitute paleoenvironmental archives of the outcomes of natural processes and human activities in the Pampas. We identified the main forcing factors behind hydrological shifts during the past ca. 200 years in La Barrancosa, a shallow lake located in the southeastern Pampas. The data provide a historical context to better understand environmental changes in the area during the twentieth century. Variations in biological (ostracods, chironomids and pigments), geochemical and sedimentological variables were interpreted in terms of lake level and trophic state changes. The low diversity of biological assemblages and the autoecology of the ostracod and chironomid taxa suggest that during parts of the record assigned to the nineteenth century, near the end of the Little Ice Age, La Barrancosa was a shallow, ephemeral, subsaline wetland, indicating drier-than-present conditions. Thereafter, a hiatus from ca. AD 1860–1940 is attributed to denudation processes during the Pampas Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s. The onset of wetter conditions around 1940 brought higher lake levels and establishment of a perennial shallow lake, inferred mostly from shifts in sedimentological and geochemical variables. Marked variations in fossil pigments and in ostracod and chironomid assemblages reveal that the basin shifted from being endorheic to arheic around 1970, in spite of increased precipitation, forced by changes in global circulation patterns. This shift coincided with an inferred increase in primary production and was coeval with profound land use changes and technological innovations in the region. Further changes in sedimentological, geochemical and biological variables indicate that eutrophication accelerated from 1990 onwards, most likely as a consequence of the increase in planted area around the lake, massive application of fertilizer, and cultivation of pesticide-intensive transgenic soybeans. This study provides an historical perspective into ongoing environmental deterioration of shallow lakes in the Argentinian Pampas.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the following institutions: Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina), through Project UBACyT 20020110100153; Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (Argentina), through Project PICT-2012-2931; and Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva (Argentina) jointly with Ministero degli Affari Esteri (Italy), through Project MINCyT-MAE IT/10/10. MSP was awarded a grant by the Ministero degli Affari Esteri (Italy) for a scientific stay at the Istituto per lo Studio degli Ecosistemi (Italy). We thank Stefano Gerli for help with measurement of sedimentary pigments and Natalia García Chapori for assistance with field tasks. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, which helped improve an earlier version of the manuscript. This is the Contribution R-265 of the IDEAN (UBA_CONICET).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Estudios Andinos “Don Pablo Groeber” (Universidad de Buenos Aires-CONICET), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    María Sofía Plastani, Cecilia Laprida & Josefina Ramón Mercau

  2. CENAC (Administración de Parques Nacionales-CONICET), Bariloche, Argentina

    Fernanda Montes de Oca & Julieta Massaferro

  3. Instituto de Geocronología y Geología Isotópica (Universidad de Buenos Aires-CONICET), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Héctor Osvaldo Panarello

  4. Istituto per lo Studio degli Ecosistemi (CNR), Verbania Pallanza, Italy

    Andrea Lami

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  1. María Sofía Plastani
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  2. Cecilia Laprida
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Correspondence to María Sofía Plastani.

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Plastani, M.S., Laprida, C., Montes de Oca, F. et al. Recent environmental changes inferred from sediments in a shallow lake of the Argentinian pampas. J Paleolimnol 61, 37–52 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-018-0043-y

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