Anais 5º Simpósio de Geotecnologias no Pantanal, Campo Grande, MS, 22 a 26 de novembro 2014
Embrapa Informática Agropecuária/INPE, p.1015 -1015
Quaternary Research in the Great Wetlands of the Americas - Pantanal, Llanos and
Everglades: Insights from Remote Sensing and Limnogeology
Michael McGlue
Department of Earth and Environmental Science
University of Kentucky
106 Slone Research Building
Lexington, KY 40506 USA
[email protected]
Resumo. Several of the world’s most famous lowland tropical wetlands are found in the Americas - the Pantanal,
Llanos, and Everglades. The transition into the Anthropocene epoch has placed each of these vast wetland ecosystems at risk, due to the unique environmental and developmental stresses spurred by human activity and population
growth. Large wetlands are important for global biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles (e.g., as methane sources
and carbon dioxide sinks), as well as for our natural heritage. As a consequence, new research is needed in order to
fully appreciate the response of these wetlands to climatic and anthropogenic perturbations to the hydrologic cycle.
Water in the Pantanal, Llanos, and Everglades is fundamental to the form, function and history of these wetlands.
Our collaborative research over the past decade has begun to explore paleohydrology in the Pantanal savanna floodplain wetland of western Brazil using a geomorphological-limnogeological approach. The approach has married
remote sensing datasets with sediment core “ground truth” retrieved from lakes and floodplains. The results have
yielded new insights on complex variability in Pleistocene and Holocene effective precipitation, which appears to
respond to both insolation and high latitude ice volume. Understanding the controls and feedbacks associated with
the sensitivity of the Pantanal and the Upper Paraguay River flood pulse to climate change is important, considering that the Pantanal is a critical freshwater resource in the headwaters of the Río de la Plata Basin. Such insights
will be valuable for conservation planning, resource security, and sustainable management.
Keywords: limnogeology, remote sensing, wetlands.
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