Short‐term microbialite resurgence as indicator of ecological resilience against crises (Catamarca, Argentine Puna)

Abstract

Summary Microbialite‐producing microorganisms that inhabit the Puna lakes are traditionally considered constituents of fragile microsystems, unable to resist important environmental variations. Nevertheless, this region has experienced significant climatic fluctuations during the Holocene, raising the unsolved issue on how microbialite‐forming systems have been able to resist these changes. Turquesa lake, located within Quaternary Peinado lake‐basin (Puna), faces a hydric crisis in the last decades, which modified their physicochemical conditions. However, there has been a rapid re‐establishment of the microbialite systems once the main parameters were stabilized, which allowed the establishment of three new microbialite levels in the coast and paleo‐coastline. The aim of this contribution is to report for the first time microbialite levels in Turquesa lake, providing a multiscale analysis, besides an accurate study of the physico‐chemical context of the lake. This new record provided us the opportunity to demonstrate the short‐term resilience capacity of these microbialite‐producing microorganisms to climatic changes, offering a key approach to understand analogue processes throughout Earth history.

Community Vertical Composition of the Laguna Negra Hypersaline Microbial Mat, Puna Region (Argentinean Andes)

“…in the Altiplano-Puna region. Many HAALs harbor recently reported outstanding microbial mats and microbialites systems, including stromatolites [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Interestingly, studies of these ecosystems have led to the discovery of novel poly-extremophiles, tolerant to high UV radiation and hypersalinity, particularly bacterial and archaeal UV-tolerant strains [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 ].…”

Spatial variability of the modern radiocarbon reservoir effect in the high-altitude lake Laguna del Peinado (Southern Puna Plateau, Argentina)

“…This would be in agreement with our observations in the modern environment proving decreasing reservoir effects with increasing distance to the hydrothermal springs due to extended DIC equilibration with atmospheric CO2. However, we cannot fully exclude a decrease in the reservoir effects in the last 23 years since the core from Valero-Garcés et al (1999) was recovered probably related to a lake level lowering of at least 0.6 m (Villafañe et al, 2021) as it has been assumed for other lakes in the Altiplano-Puna Plateau (e.g. Laguna Lejía, Laguna Miscanti, Lago Chungará;Geyh et al, 1998, Grosjean et al, 2001;Moreno et al, 2007;Giralt et al, 2008).…”

“…However, the dissolution of catchment carbonates can only be a minor source of 14 C-dead carbon into Laguna del Peinado because the lithology of the basin is dominated by volcanic rocks (Seggiaro et al, 2006;Grosse et al, 2020Grosse et al, , 2022. Carbonatic outcrops are scarce and limited to few ancient lake terraces consisting of conglomerates and sandstones with volcanic clasts cemented/coated with calcite, intraclastic and biomicritic limestones, and microbialites (Valero-Garcés et al, 2001;Villafañe et al, 2021).…”

Disentangling microstructure and environmental conditions in high‐altitude Andean microbialite systems (Catamarca, Argentine Puna)

“…Data taken in the lake such as pH, total dissolved solids, conductivity and water temperature were taken by Villafañe, C onsole-Gonella, et al (2021). Microstructure (microscopic fabrics observed under petrographic analysis) (Shapiro, 2000;Vennin et al, 2015) was analysed at the laboratory of the Instituto Superior de Correlaci on Geol ogica (INSUGEO, CONICET-UNT) through the use of polish slabs and thin sections.…”