Seasonal variations with alternating dry and rainy seasons and fluctuating levels of nutrients are factors that significantly influence greenhouse gas emissions from soda lakes in the Pantanal, considered less common than emissions from freshwater lakes.
Seasonal variations with alternating dry and rainy seasons and fluctuating levels of nutrients are factors that significantly influence greenhouse gas emissions from soda lakes in the Pantanal, considered less common than emissions from freshwater lakes. The Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland, with an area of 153,000 km2, mostly (77,41%) in southwestern Brazil but also partly in Bolivia (16,41%) and Paraguay (6,15%). A study by scientists at the University of São Paulo (USP) and the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in Brazil proposes a novel perspective on the biological factors that affect these emissions and emphasizes the urgent need for more research on the topic.
There are some 900 soda lakes in the Pantanal. They are shallow and strongly alkaline, with pH levels as high as 11 and concentrations of salts such as carbonates and bicarbonates that directly influence the microbiology of the environment and its diversity of plankton.
An article on the study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment notes the need to include the composition and functions of microbial communities in greenhouse gas emission models in order to be able to analyze these ecosystems more completely and predict how they may react to environmental changes caused by extreme weather and wildfires, for example.
Read more at: Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Dao Paulo
Soda lakes are less common than freshwater lakes in the Pantanal (Photo Credit: Thierry Alexandre Pellegrinetti/CENA-USP)
