Limnogeology in southern South America: an overview.

PIOVANO, E.; CÓRDOBA, F.; STUTZ S.

LATIN AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEDIMENTOLOGY AND BASIN ANALYSIS

AAS

Año: 2015 vol. 21 p. 65 - 75

1851-4979

One of the major goals of Limnogeology is to provide clues on past Earth system environmental unevenness and feedbacks on longer time scales(100s-1,000s of years)than instrumental records, thus including periods with null or low anthropic influences on the environment. The multiproxy approach in the analysis of lake records allows to gain a wider overview than could be acquired from a single proxy data. Unlike the Northern Hemisphere, reconstructions of Late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental variability across Southern South America have been hampered by the paucity of complete and well-dated paleoclimate archives. However, last decades have been marked by a substantial increase of paleoclimatic research providing new data to analyze past climate variability from a regional prospective in Southern South America.This special issue include five articles applying a variety of proxy data (physical, chemical and biological) to elucidate climate and environmental changes on various scale of time. Contributions cover a wide geographic distribution from the Antarctic Peninsula, Patagonia, Pampean region and NW Argentina up to the Río de la Plata estuary.Results provide critical elements for further assessments of latitudinal paleo-circulation dynamics and hydroclimatic changes. The recent proliferation of limnogeological studies in Argentina and Uruguay evidence the reinforcement of regional research networks providing comparative and integrative analysis.