Diatoms of North AmericaThe influence of Holocene marine flooding events on Lake Izabal, Guatemala
Description: The Izabal/Golfete freshwater ecosystem in Eastern Guatemala has an elevation that is slightly above sea level. Through the Dulce River, the two coastal lake ecosystems are connected to the Caribbean Sea and are mildly influenced by seasonal migration of marine water. During regionally dry periods the elevations of these ecosystems can be below sea level. Throughout the Holocene, these ecosystems underwent two significant marine incursion events during the Holocene. The first of these, estimated to have occurred around 8 kya, created a dramatic change in the Lake Izabal ecosystem, from which it took thousands of years to recover. A second, less intense marine incursion occurred around 2 kya, which caused the system to become brackish and triggered a similar biodiversity loss but with a much shorter recovery. These events provide an unparalleled opportunity to investigate the paleolimnological response of the structural and functional diversity to rapid and gradual environmental changes associated with marine inundation. Marine flooding of coastal freshwater ecosystems is likely to increase in frequency with rising global temperatures, placing this paleoecological study in a unique position to explore how biodiverse ecosystems may respond to future marine flooding events.
