Anthropogenic influence on the sediment chemistry and diatom assemblages of Balamtetik Lake, Chiapas, Mexico

Caballero, Margarita; Mora, Lucy; Muñoz, Esperanza; Escolero Fuentes, Oscar A.; Bonifaz, Roberto; Ruiz, Carolina; Prado, Blanca

Anthropogenic influence on the sediment chemistry and diatom assemblages of Balamtetik Lake, Chiapas, Mexico

2020

Balamtetik is the receiving body of the Rio Grande de Comitán and is located just at the outskirts of the Montebello National Park, Chiapas, México. Multi-elemental, infrared spectra, ¹³⁷Cs, ²¹⁰Pb, and diatom analyses in a 75-cm sediment core were used to reconstruct the recent disturbance history of the lake. The sequence chronology, based mostly on ¹³⁷Cs profiles, allowed to infer high sedimentation rates in Balamtetik (~ 7 mm/year) and a nearly cyclic series of disturbance events that can be related to anthropogenic causes such as deforestation and increased development of agriculture and urban areas at local and regional scale. These disturbance events show high local and regional erosion (high Ca, TIC, and Ti), soil organic matter (IR spectra), eutrophication (high P and diatoms), and anoxic bottom water conditions (low Mn) and can be dated to the early 1950s, the late 1950s, and from the 1980s until the 2000s. The entrance of wastewaters is related with an increase in salinity inferred by the diatom record and the organic matter type. The first two disturbance events are related to changes in land use during the agrarian reform that started during the 1940s; the last event is related with the increase in local population and the introduction of intensive agriculture. This last phase of disturbance corresponds with the reports of fish mortality events around 2003; however, high lake turbidity and anoxic bottom waters seem to have been established since the 1980s. The record from Lake Balamtetik also shows that during the intermediate periods, there was a recovery of the lake and its catchment; however, the future trends might be different, as the increase in the speed of organic matter and nutrients arrival to the lake reduces its resilience.

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