Climatic control on the Holocene hydrology of a playa-lake system in the western Mediterranean
Metadata
Show full item recordEditorial
Elsevier
Materia
Paleohydrological evolution Southwestern Iberian Peninsula Saline lakes Aridification
Date
2022-04-13Referencia bibliográfica
Antonio García-Alix... [et al.]. Climatic control on the Holocene hydrology of a playa-lake system in the western Mediterranean, CATENA, Volume 214, 2022, 106292, ISSN 0341-8162, [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2022.106292]
Sponsorship
Spanish Government B-RNM-144-UGR; Proyectos I + D + i del Programa Operativo FEDER 2018-Junta de Andalucia-UGR B-RNM-144-UGR; Spanish Government RNM-190; European Commission B-RNM-144-UGR BES-2018-084293; Junta de Andalusia CGL2013-47038-R CGL2017- 85415-R P18-RT-871; Ramon y Cajal Fellowship RYC of the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economia y Competividad) Retos P20_00059 2015-18966; University of Granada/CBUA RYC 2020-029811-IAbstract
Evaporitic lakes such as playa-lakes are characteristic of many arid regions and are unique environments with
respect to fauna and flora, while being very vulnerable to climate and environmental fluctuations and threatened
by the current global change scenario. Water balance oscillations in these systems can trigger the precipitation or
dissolution of different evaporitic minerals, negatively impacting local biodiversity and economic activities.
Here, we study the sedimentary record of a small saline pond from a playa-lake complex in southwestern Iberia in
order to reconstruct the paleohydrological evolution of this area and assess potential anthropogenic disturbances.
The different proxies studied in the ~11.9 ky old sedimentary record of the Laguna de la Ballestera suggest that
the greatest lake extension and the highest water levels occurred during the Early Holocene, pointing to the
wettest period of the record. Climate transitioned towards more arid conditions during the Middle Holocene, and
even more dramatically during the Late Holocene. In this last stage the wetland surface and the water level
largely diminished and gypsum precipitation gradually increased pointing towards a negative precipitation/
evapotranspiration balance and lowest water levels. Summer desiccation likely occurred under this scenario,
especially after ~1.0–0.9 cal ky BP coeval with the Medieval Climate Anomaly, when gypsum content started to
rise abruptly. However, this significant gypsum precipitation was only associated with a massive drop in the
siliciclastic content and scarce carbonates (dolomite and calcite) during the last ~400 years. This evidence
suggests a shift from a (semi) permanent to a temporal/seasonal hydrological regime. The environmental evolution
of this wetland responded to the general climatic evolution of the western Mediterranean during the
Holocene, being mostly controlled by changes in insolation. Our data also show that the environmental response
of the studied wetland to natural climate variations was only significantly disturbed by human activities since the
20th century, especially in the second half of the century, deduced by abrupt fluctuations in the siliciclastic,
gypsum and organic content in the sediments, as well as by the enhanced sedimentary accumulation rates,
probably as a response to changes in the hydroperiod of the lake and in the catchment land use.