Deeply-sourced springs of the Argentina backarc as windows into the subsurface

CASCONE M; BASTIANONI A; SCELCI M.; CORREGGIA M; DI LORIO L; CORDONE A; BARRY P.; LLOYD K.; JESSEN G.; AGOSTINA CHIODI; DE MOOR M.; NAKAGAWA M.; RAMÍREZ C; SCHRENK M; GIOVANELLI D.

Pisa

Workshop; International Workshop C4 ?Climate Change and Carbon Cycle?; 2022

Subsurface environments, especially those connected to subduction zones, represent one of the largestecosystems of our planet. These regions, where the lithosphere is deformed by plate movement, play acritical role in recycling volatiles and elements between the surface and the Earth’s interior [1,2]. Fluids andgases originating from the subducting slab as well as from the interaction of the rising fluids and melts withthe overlying crust, generate "hot spots" of microbial diversity and activity driven by the sharp redox,geochemical and often thermal gradients [3,4]. Given their direct connection with the subsurface,deeply-sourced springs can be used as a window into the deep to understand processes happening at depth.To be able to use deeply-sourced springs as conduits to the subsurface we need to be able to deconvolve thesurface signals from the deep subsurface ones. Despite the abundance of studies looking at the microbiologyof hot springs globally, there are relatively few studies linking microbial diversity to the underlyinggeological processes, being especially scarce in the backarc regions [3]. The objective of this work is theinvestigation of the microbial diversity of 13 deeply sourced springs from the backarc in Puna area,Argentina, through the correlation of 16s rRNA gene analyses, metagenomics data and the environmentalvariables to assess the extent of influence from surface processes of the spring communities.