EM - Escola de Minas

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Human impacts outpace natural processes in the Amazon.
(2023) Albert, James S.; Carnaval, Ana Carolina Oliveira de Queiroz; Flantua, Suzette G. A.; Lohmann, Lúcia Garcez; Ribas, Camila Cherem; Gonçalves, Douglas Riff; Carrillo, Juan D.; Fan, Ying; Figueiredo, Jorge de Jesus Picanço de; Guayasamin, Juan Manuel; Hoorn, Carina; Melo, Gustavo Henrique Coelho de; Nascimento, Nathália de Oliveira; Nobre Quesada, Carlos Alberto; Ulloa, Carmen Ulloa; Val, Pedro Fonseca de Almeida e; Arieira, Julia; Encalada Romero, Andrea Carolina; Nobre, Carlos Afonso
Amazonian environments are being degraded by modern industrial and agricultural activities at a pace far above anything previously known, imperiling its vast biodiversity reserves and globally important ecosystem services. The most substantial threats come from regional deforestation, because of export market demands, and global climate change. The Amazon is currently perched to transition rapidly from a largely forested to a nonforested landscape. These changes are happening much too rapidly for Amazonian species, peoples, and ecosystems to respond adaptively. Policies to prevent the worst outcomes are known and must be enacted immediately. We now need political will and leadership to act on this information. To fail the Amazon is to fail the biosphere, and we fail to act at our peril.
Cyclic sediment deposition by orbital forcing in the Miocene wetland of western Amazonia? : new insights from a multidisciplinary approach.
(2022) Hoorn, Carina; Kukla, Tyler; Bogotá Angel, Raul Giovanni; Soelen, Els van; González Arango, Catalina; Wesselingh, Frank P.; Vonhof, Hubert; Val, Pedro Fonseca de Almeida e; Morcote Rios, Gaspar; Roddaz, Martin; Dantas, Elton Luiz; Santos, Roberto Ventura; Damsté, Jaap S. Sinninghe; Kim, Jung-Hyun; Morley, Robert J.
In the Miocene, a large wetland system extended from the Andean foothills into western Amazonia. This system has no modern analogue and the driving mechanisms are not yet fully understood. Dynamic topography and Andean uplift are thought to have controlled deposition, with allocyclic base level changes driven by eustasy and orbital forcing also playing a role. In this study we investigate the presumed orbital cyclicity that controlled sediment deposition, while also assessing sediment source and biomes in the Miocene wetland. We do this by integrating lithological, palyno- logical, malacological and geochemical data from the Los Chorros site (Amazon River, Colombia), and by placing our data in a sequence stratigraphic framework. In this sequence biostratigraphic evaluation, the Los Chorros succession is visualized to be composed of a series of flood-fill packages, with a rapid initial flood, marine-influenced conditions at the time of maximum flood, followed by a longer regressive infill phase. Based on the palynology we could differ- entiate local vegetation, such as palm swamps, from regional origin such as terra firme vegetation (non-flooded Amazonian forest) and Andean montane forest, while from sediment geochemistry we could separate local and regional sediment sources. At the times of flooding, oligotrophic and eutrophic aquatic conditions alternatively characterized the wetland, as is shown by the presence of algae, floating ferns, and mollusc assemblages, while intervening subaquatic debris points to proximal submerged lowlands. In the lower 20 m of the section, marine in- fluences are intermittently evident and shown by short-lived maxima of mangrove pollen, foraminiferal test linings, dinoflagellate cysts, coastal mollusc species, and an episodic decline in terrestrial biomarkers. The upper 5 m of the section is characterized by floodplain forest taxa with a diversity in tropical rain forest taxa and relatively few lacustrine indicators. These marine, mangrove, and lacustrine indicators suggest that the outcrops at Los Chorros represent predominant marine-influenced lacustrine conditions during periods of sea level highstand. The sequence biostratigraphic evaluation further points to eight 41 kyr obliquity-driven depositional cycles, with rapid phases of transgression. Mangrove elements would have colonised within the timeframe of each sea level rise. Based on this relative age constraint and comparison to regional records, deposition likely took place prior to the 13.8 Myr global sea level fall, and most likely during the period just after 14.5 Ma, between Middle Miocene Climatic Optimum (MMCO; 17–14 Ma) and Middle Miocene Climate Transition (MMCT; 14.7–13.8 Ma). Palynological evidence further suggests that to the west, surface elevation ranged from ~1000 up to ~3500 m and hosted protoparamo vegetation, the oldest yet reported and in agreement with predictions from molecular studies. In contrast, contemporaneous sites to the northeast of the wetland consisted of fluvial and cratonic formations, as shown by their Nd and Sr isotopic sediment signature. In summary, our data lead to an improved understanding of how geological and astronomical mechanisms controlled the floral and faunal distribution and controlled sediment deposition in western Amazonia during the middle Miocene. As Miocene conditions strongly contrast with modern western Amazonia, our data provide an important context for the deep time history and evolution of the modern western Amazon rainforest.
The changing course of the Amazon River in the Neogene : center stage for Neotropical diversification.
(2018) Albert, James S.; Val, Pedro Fonseca de Almeida e; Hoorn, Carina
We review geological evidence on the origin of the modern transcontinental Amazon River, and the paleogeographic history of riverine connections among the principal sedimentary basins of northern South America through the Neogene. Data are reviewed from new geochronological datasets using radiogenic and stable isotopes, and from traditional geochronological methods, including sedimentology, structural mapping, sonic and seismic logging, and biostratigraphy. The modern Amazon River and the continental-scale Amazon drainage basin were assembled during the late Miocene and Pliocene, via some of the largest purported river capture events in Earth history. Andean sediments are first recorded in the Amazon Fan at about 10.1-9.4 Ma, with a large increase in sedimentation at about 4.5 Ma. The transcontinental Amazon River therefore formed over a period of about 4.9-5.6 million years, by means of several river capture events. The origins of the modern Amazon River are hypothesized to be linked with that of mega-wetland landscapes of tropical South America (e.g. várzeas, pantanals, seasonally flooded savannahs). Mega-wetlands have persisted over about 10% northern South America under different configurations for >15 million years. Although the paleogeographic reconstructions presented are simplistic and coarse-grained, they are offered to inspire the collection and analysis of new sedimentological and geochronological datasets.

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