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Recent flood management efforts obscure the climate signal in a sediment record from a tropical lake

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Abstract

Lake sediment cores contain useful archives of severe past climate events (e.g. droughts, hurricanes, dust storms) and patterns of global climate change. Most such records come from higher latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. Here we present sediment core data from shallow, equatorial Lake La Tembladera on the southern coast of Ecuador, which contains a > 100-year record of flooding events. We used geochemical properties of a 210Pb-dated sediment core to identify two distinct sedimentary facies. Facies one represents lake-derived deposits and is characterized by sediments with relatively higher organic matter and nitrogen content. Facies two represents flood events and is characterized by sediments with greater concentrations of inorganic carbon and terrigenous elements Al and Ti. Pollen from introduced Pinus sp. and Hg associated with recent gold mining provided independent time-markers in the sediment to validate the 210Pb chronology. The comparisons of the geochemical signal with the ENSO reconstructions revealed that the sediments contain a poor signal of ENSO from AD 1930–1965. The weak ENSO signal may result from minimal climate sensitivity in the lake or early water control efforts (e.g. rudimentary damming). However, from AD 1965, the climate signal is totally masked by recent and documented anthropogenic works such as dams and canals. This record shows how anthropogenic efforts to minimize societal impacts of ENSO floods have masked the natural climate signal and nicely mirrored recent trends between climate and anthropogenic activities in tropical latitudes.

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Acknowledgements

CLB acknowledges her Prometeo Project grant from the Secretaría de Educación Superior, Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación de la República del Ecuador (SENESCYT). CLB thanks the technicians from the Santa Rosa government and from the many inhabitants of San José, La Florida and San Augustin for their help during fieldwork and for providing information about the ecosystem. This work was partially financed by the Project ‘‘Improvement of the conditions of small and artisanal mining in Ecuador’’ by the SENPLADES (Secretaría Nacional de Planificación y Desarrollo de Ecuador). We thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and criticism, which greatly improved the quality of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad de Ingeniería Civil y Ambiental, Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Ladrón de Guevara E11-253, P.O. Box 17-01-2759, Quito, Ecuador

    Charo López-Blanco

  2. INIGEMM (Instituto Nacional de Investigación Geológico, Minero y Metalúrgico), Sector Monteserrín: Las Malvas E15-142 y De los Perales, Quito, Ecuador

    Charo López-Blanco & Andrés Varas

  3. Land Use and Environmental Change Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611-2120, USA

    William F. Kenney

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  1. Charo López-Blanco
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  2. William F. Kenney
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  3. Andrés Varas
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Correspondence to Charo López-Blanco.

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López-Blanco, C., Kenney, W.F. & Varas, A. Recent flood management efforts obscure the climate signal in a sediment record from a tropical lake. J Paleolimnol 58, 467–478 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-017-0004-x

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