Climate Change, Human Impacts and Wetland Response Over the Late Quaternary - A New Exploration of the Pantanal

The goal of this project is to examine how the world's largest tropical wetland, the Brazilian Pantanal, responds to climate change and anthropogenic impacts. The sensitivity of the Pantanal to variability in effective precipitation and human development is not well understood, but it is certain that the ecosystems services provided by the wetlands (freshwater source, fishery/rookery space, agriculture) are at risk, should major changes to the water cycle occur. Our lens for viewing this response is well-dated lake sediment cores, which we propose to collect from the largest lake in the Pantanal, Lagoa Uberaba. Scientific exploration of the Pantanal is still in its infancy, and Lagoa Uberaba remains largely unknown from a limnogeological perspective. The project requires a remote field campaign which will be facilitated by Brazilian co-investigators. Funding from National Geographic will support this exploratory fieldwork and the participation of University of Kentucky student Edward Lo, who has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study at UFMS-Corumbá for 2015.