Agricultural impacts on ecosystem functioning in temperate areas of North and South America

Land use has a large impact on ecosystem functioning, though evidences of these impacts at the regional scale are scarce. The objective of this paper was to analyze the impacts of agricultural land use on ecosystem functioning (radiation interception and carbon uptake) in temperate areas of North and South America. From land cover maps generated using high-resolution satellite images we selected sites dominated by row crops (RC), small grain crops (SG), pastures (PA), and rangelands (RA) in the Central Plains of USA and the Pampas of Argentina. These two regions share climatic characteristics and the agricultural conditions (crop types) are also very similar. Both areas were originally dominated by temperate grasslands. In these sites we extracted the temporal series of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from the NOAA satellites for the period 1989–1998 and calculated the mean seasonal NDVI curve for each site. Additionally, we calculated the mean annual NDVI, the maximum NDVI, the date of the year when the max NDVI was recorded and the interannual variability of these three attributes. We compared the mean values of each NDVI-derived attribute between land cover types and between continents. The NDVI seasonal patterns for each land cover type were roughly similar between the Central Plains and the Pampas during the growing season. The largest differences were observed during the winter and spring, when the NDVI of all land cover types in the Central Plains remained at lower values than in the Pampas. This was probably caused by the high annual thermal amplitude in the Central Plains that results in a much more restricted growing season. As a result of these differences in the shape of the NDVI curve, the mean annual NDVI in the Central Plains was lower than in the Pampas for all land cover types but the maximum NDVI did not differ importantly. In both regions, row crops delayed the date of the NDVI peak, small grain crops advanced it and pastures did not change it importantly, compared with rangelands. The interannual variability of the NDVI attributes was higher for small grains than for row crops in both regions. However, small grains crops were consistently more variable between years in the Central Plains than in the Pampas. The opposite occurred with pastures and rangelands, which were more variable in the Pampas than in the Central Plains. This paper confirms and generalizes previous findings that showed important imprints of land use on ecosystem functioning in temperate ecosystems. Our results support the idea that the changes in land cover that have occurred in the Central Plains and the Pampas leaded to similar changes in the way that ecosystems absorb solar radiation and in the patterns of carbon uptake.     

Linking soil water balance with flood spatial arrangement in an extremely flat landscape

In areas with very mild relief, water drains in a disordered way due to the lack of a developed drainage network, as it occurs in extremely flat sedimentary regions like the Argentine Pampas. The study analysed the flood spatial arrangements in 2014 by calculating landscape metrics and relating them to soil water balance. The study area is located at Del Azul creek lower basin (Pampa Ecoregion, Argentina). Daily soil water balances were obtained, and seven landscape metrics were calculated in 15 windows in five LandSat images, all along 2014, to explore the relationship between hydrological scenarios and spatial pattern summarized with principal component analysis. Water excess concentrated in winter (June and August); deficits were in late spring and summer (January and November), whereas the beginning of autumn (March) was an intermediate situation. Principal component 1 (44.7%) reflected area and shape metrics and correlated positively with water table level; principal component 2 (32.3%) summarized aggregation ones and was negatively associated with accumulated water excesses or deficits in previous 30 days and useful reserve. Both exhibited possible threshold-driven behaviour. Internal heterogeneity between NW and SE zones within the study area coincided with the existence of ancient alluvial fans. The results highlight the peculiarities of the flood spatial patterns in regions with very mild relief, where landforms usually determine water flows.     

Environmental history since 11,000 C yr B.P. of the northeastern Pampas, Argentina, from alluvial sequences of the Luján River

Sedimentological, malacological, and pollen analyses from ¹⁴C-dated alluvial sections from the Luján River provide a detailed record of environmental changes during the Holocene in the northeastern Pampas of Argentina. From 11,200 to 9000 ¹⁴C yr B.P., both sedimentary and biological components suggest that the depositional environment was eutrophic, alkaline, and freshwater to brackish shallow water bodies without significant water circulation. During this time, bioclastic sedimentation was dominant and the shallow water bodies reached maximum development as the climate became more humid, suggesting an increase in precipitation. Short-term fluctuations in climate during the last stage of this interval may have been sufficient to initiate changes in the water bodies, as reduction of the volume alternated with periods of flooding. The beginning of the evolution of shallow swamps in the wide floodplain or huge wetlands was contemporaneous with a sea level lower than the present one. From 9000 and 7000 ¹⁴C yr B.P., mesotrophic, alkaline, brackish, probably anoxic swamps existed. Between 7000 and 3000 ¹⁴C yr B.P., anoxic calcareous swamps were formed, with subaerial exposure and development of the Puesto Berrondo Soil (3500-2900 ¹⁴C yr B.P.). A trend to a reduction of water bodies is recorded from 9000 to ca. 3000 ¹⁴C yr B.P., with a significant reduction after ca. 7000 ¹⁴C yr B.P. A shift to subhumid-dry climate after 7000 ¹⁴C yr B.P. appears to be the main cause. During this time, an additional external forcing toward higher groundwater levels was caused by Holocene marine transgression causing changes in the water bodies levels. The climate became drier during the late Holocene (ca. 3000 yr B.P.), when clastic sedimentation increased, under subhumid-dry conditions. Flood events increased in frequency during this time. From ca. A.D. 1790 to present, the pollen record reflects widespread disturbance of the vegetation during the European settlement.