EGU22-7988
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-7988
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Ancient Tillandsia landbeckii dune ecosystems and their potential to reveal past variations in coastal fog moisture during the Holocene in the Atacama Desert

Claudio Latorre1,2, Sergio Contreras3, Andrea Jaeschke4, Juan Luis Garcia5, and Camilo del Río5
Claudio Latorre et al.
  • 1Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Departamento de Ecologia, Santiago, Chile (clatorre@bio.puc.cl)
  • 2Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Santiago, Chile
  • 3Universidad Catolica de la Santisima Concepcion, Departamento de Quimica Ambiental, Facultad de Ciencias, Concepcion, Chile
  • 4Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
  • 5Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Instituto de Geografía, Santiago, Chile

Tillandsia landbeckii is a bromeliad that inhabits the hyperarid coast of the Atacama Desert where it survives solely on moisture and nutrients from fog. It does so by constituting a unique dune ecosystem that maximizes its fog capture potential as well as preserving layers of buried tillandsia plants. These buried layers can survive over multiple millennia and here we present data based on stratigraphic, radiocarbon, stable isotopes, and leaf wax analyses that we are applying to these ancient leaves and stems to reconstruct past variations in fog moisture and nutrient cycling. Some of the oldest buried layers date back to >10,000 14C yrs BP and our results show that both d15N and leaf waxes are capable of tracking variations in moisture changes although we observed significant variation in d15N values across living plants which may be due to the plants' age. Past variations in fog likely track variations in large-scale synoptic climate features such as the height of the Marine Boundary Layer and the strength of the Southern Pacific Anticyclone.

How to cite: Latorre, C., Contreras, S., Jaeschke, A., Garcia, J. L., and del Río, C.: Ancient Tillandsia landbeckii dune ecosystems and their potential to reveal past variations in coastal fog moisture during the Holocene in the Atacama Desert, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-7988, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-7988, 2022.

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