Future Perspectives: Pampean Lakes in the Anthropocene

Abstract

The Pampa plain is the most densely populated and productive areain Argentina. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, agriculture and livestockhave strongly modified the land cover, profoundly altering the biogeochemicalcycles, water consumption, and biodiversity. The lack of limnological monitoringprogrammes to track environmental deterioration indicates that paleolimnologicalreconstructions provide critical clues to answer questions dealing with the occurrence,timing, and frequency of climate fluctuations at the scale of hundreds andthousands of years. Analysis of the present-day perturbation must be inscribed in awide time window to disentangle the nature of the forcings (i.e., natural or anthropogenic)behind the environmental changes. Lakes are unique natural systems thatpreserve the “memory” of all kinds of events that have occurred in the territory.Faced with the challenges ahead is necessary to develop a more in-depth approachthat goes beyond the traditional paleolimnological perspective and takes into accountthe multiple forms of knowledge.