The national and international scientific community have come together in a project that seeks to provide information to project the climatic conditions of the Coquimbo Region, within the framework of the initiative Research Program in Climate Action Planning (Climate Action Planning –CLAP-), developed by CEAZA.
Communications CEAZA.- In order to project, or rather anticipate, the future scenarios of the planet in the face of climate change, the scientific community makes enormous efforts to collect information and collaborate in the decisions that are made in this regard. And in this matter, an investigation carried out in Chile, and also, on the coasts of the Coquimbo Region, seeks to contribute to this cause from small marine organisms called foraminifera, similar to amoebas, which build a “little house” of calcium carbonate that allows to analyze and know the climate of the past.
Dharma Reyes, researcher at the University of Stirling, Scotlandand the UPWELL Millennium Nucleus, explains more about these species, within the framework of a recent visit to the area to sample and analyze them, within the framework of the project Research Program in Climate Action Planning (Climate Action Planning –CLAP-), developed by CEAZA.
Ecological analysis of foraminifera
“A year and a half ago we won an international collaboration project between Chile and the United Kingdom, whose coordinator is the researcher Claire Bird. It should be noted that there are foraminifera that are planktonic, that is, they live floating in the ocean at different depths, and others that are benthic, that live at the bottom of the sea, and we, to study the climate of the past, examine their carbonate shell. of calcium that are preserved in marine sediments and that are very abundant in the ocean”, the scientist specifies.
Dharma also comments that, in a teaspoon of marine sediment, a thousand of these species can be found, which offers the possibility of carrying out an ecological analysis of them. “For example, there are species that only live in environments like those of Coquimbo, which are influenced by the Humboldt current and the system of warm currents that come from Peru to here, and there are also foraminifera that only live in the tropics and others that only live at the poles”.
The researcher also details that changes in sea temperature can only be studied using their ecology, “but the big problem that exists is that all studies of foraminifera for the study of the ocean in the past with sediments are based on morphology of the bugs, the problem is that we assume that if we see them similar it is a species and we assume that this species is genetically the same, and what this project intends to do is confirm if what one sees morphologically, genetically is true or not”.
“Each species has its chemical balance with seawater, it depends on the species,” adds Dharma. “For example, there are some foraminifera that are carnivorous, others that are herbivorous, so geochemically they can change, depending on their diet and where they live, and they will give you different information, and the southeastern Pacific, which is where we are located, is an area where there are no genotypic studies of foraminifera, almost the entire ocean, worldwide, is studied, so this will be the first genetic study of foraminifera in Chile”.
Calibrate to obtain accurate information
Regarding the above, the scientist highlights that the research group is dedicated to calibration, and gives the example of a common thermometer to measure the temperature: “to use that thermometer correctly, someone had to calibrate it in the industry before selling it to you in the pharmacy, in order to say that your body temperature is 37 or 38, for example. So, we do that with these bugs so that when we reconstruct the climate of the past it is as accurate as possible and that it is regionally calibrated or validated.”
Regarding the results of the project, Dharma explains that the first results are being processed, where the most difficult thing is to remove the foraminifera and keep them alive until they are placed in a chemical compound where they are fixed in life to extract the DNA directly. “This is an initial collaboration project, that is, for two years, where samples will be obtained in Concepción, in Mejillones and in Coquimbo, in Punta Lengua de Vaca. Next year we will come back to see if there are going to be El Niño conditions so we can compare with the current samples.”
Finally, the researcher comments that the project is purely biological, linked to paleoceanography. “The idea is that we can join paleoceanography, which is the study of the sediments where these little bugs are preserved, with the water column, which is their modern biology. Then, the idea is to send our information to modelers so that they can take the information from the past to be able to project what the future could be like in this regard”.
National and international collaboration for CEAZA
In the words of the researcher CEAZA, Dr. Carlos Henríquez, this project is quite collaborative since it involves researchers from the University of Stirling, and also local and national institutions, such as the University of Concepción. “These collaborative projects are going to make it possible to strengthen our CEAZA Scientific Center, and also favor possible exchanges and collaborations between the different groups that are part of this in the near future.”
Regarding the investigation, Dr. Henríquez specifies that samples are being collected near Punta Lengua de Vaca, in Tongoy, an area well known for being a center of high upwelling. “This involves lab work, which is basically using our facilities. Thanks to the equipment that we have as a FIGEMA laboratory, the researchers have extracted genetic material and have prepared samples to analyze them in their institutions”.
Finally, it should be noted that the international collaboration activity was possible thanks to initiatives developed by CEAZA, such as the ANILLOS project “ENSO-Climate Change and the Carbon cycle in the Pacific South East (ECLIPSE)”, and the international linkage project “International Alliance for the generation of knowledge and capacities to detect remote and local processes of oceanic acidification on the coasts of Chile (IN-RELOAD)”; oceanographic research projects on the Coquimbo coast that provided support from researchers, boats and oceanographic equipment, essential for the development of international collaboration activity.
