Natural and anthropogenic oil impacts on benthic foraminifera in the southern Gulf of Mexico

Ruiz-Fernández, Ana Carolina; Gracía, Adolfo; Sanchez-Cabeza, Joan-Albert; Rodríguez-Ramírez, Alejandro; Alexander-Valdés, H. M.; Pérez-Bernal, Libia Hascibe; Nava-Fernández, X. A.; Gómez-Lizarrága, Laura Elena; Almaraz-Ruiz, Laura; Schwing, Patrick; Hollander, David J.

doi:10.1016/j.marenvres.2019.06.006

Cited by 24 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The most noticeable is related to the periphery (lobular for E. exigua , rounded for E. sandiegoensis ), the number of chambers in the last whorl (five in E. exigua , six in E. sandiegoensis ), and the sutures (generally depressed in E. sandiegoensis while in E. exigua they are depressed only in the umbilicus area). To make sure of this determination, well-preserved specimens of each species from the Gulf of Mexico (SGM9 campaign; for details, see Machain-Castillo et al, 2019) and the GT (Tehua II) were compared to each other and our MD02-2521 specimens, detecting the mentioned differences amongst both taxa (Figure 7b); therefore we consider them to be different species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paleoceanographic evolution of the Gulf of Tehuantepec (Mexican Pacific) during the last ~6 millennia

García-Gallardo

Almaraz-Ruiz

2020

The Holocene

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Oceanographic dynamics in the Gulf of Tehuantepec (GT) are the direct consequence of climate variability, mainly influenced by the strong wind regime locally called “Tehuanos” and the interactions between the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The area is characterized by intense upwelling driven by the Tehuanos within one of the largest Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZ) in the world. Upwelling carries nutrient-rich subsurface waters to the surface and provides marine resources to the coasts conforming one of the main economic sectors in the region. In this study, sediment core MD02-2521 is used to perform the first high-resolution paleoceanographic reconstruction of the last 6 millennia in the GT. The main focus is put on the analysis of the benthic foraminifera (BF) assemblages inhabiting within the OMZ, which appear to respond to bottom oxygenation and climate variations of the last ~6000 years. The microfossil assemblages throughout the sediment core revealed, first, intervals where the lack of foraminifera provide evidence of episodes of strong deoxygenation that triggered the dissolution of calcareous foraminiferal tests, second, a long-term decline of bottom-water oxygenation in the last ~2500 years likely responding to the southward migration of the ITCZ. Last, variations in response to the transitions between cold and warm periods occurred during the last 2–2.5 millennia and cyclicities of 1470 years resembling Bond Cycles suggest a climatic connection between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans during the late-Holocene.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paleoceanographic evolution of the Gulf of Tehuantepec (Mexican Pacific) during the last ~6 millennia

García-Gallardo

Almaraz-Ruiz

2020

The Holocene

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“…It is important to continue ongoing research efforts in these areas to disentangle the effects of ongoing petroleum exploration and DWH from other chronic stressors, particularly to document the pace of long-term recovery. Finally, the Campeche Canyon in the southern GoM, which is located just north of Laguna Terminos and the petroleum production exclusion zone in the Cantarell field, has also been identified as a biologically sensitive area (Machain-Castillo et al, 2019) and is analogous to the canyons in the northern GoM with respect to MOSSFA focusing during past (Ixtoc 1) and future spills.…”

Section: Future Research Recommendations and Synthesis Statementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Synthesis of Deep Benthic Faunal Impacts and Resilience Following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

et al. 2020

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The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill significantly impacted the northern Gulf of Mexico (nGoM) deep benthos (>125 m water depth) at different spatial scales and across all community size and taxa groups including microbes, foraminifera, meiofauna, macrofauna, megafauna, corals, and demersal fishes. The resilience across these communities was heterogeneous, with some requiring years if not decades to fully recover. To synthesize ecosystem impacts and recovery following DWH, the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GOMRI) Core 3 synthesis group subdivided the nGoM into four ecotypes: coastal, continental shelf, open-ocean, and deep benthic. Here we present a synopsis of the deep benthic ecotype status and discuss progress made on five tasks: (1) summarizing pre-and post-oil spill trends in abundance, species composition, and dynamics; (2) identifying missing data/analyses and proposing a strategy to fill in these gaps; (3) constructing a conceptual model of important species interactions and impacting factors; (4) evaluating resiliency and recovery potential of different species; and (5) providing recommendations for future long-term benthic ecosystem research programs. To address these tasks, we assessed time series to detect measures of population trends. Moreover, a benthic conceptual model for the GoM deep benthos was developed and a vulnerability-resilience analysis was performed to enable holistic interpretation of the interrelationships among ecotypes, resources, and stressors. The DWH oil spill underscores the overall need for a system-level benthic management decision support tool based on long-term measurement of ecological quality status (EQS). Production of such a decision support tool requires temporal baselines and time-series data collections. This approach provides EQS for multiple stressors affecting the GoM beyond oil spills. In many cases, the lessons learned from DWH, the gaps identified, and the recommended approaches for future long-term hypothesis-driven research can be utilized to better assess impacts of any ecosystem perturbation of industrial impact, including marine mineral extraction.

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“…The geochemistry of beach sediments in the Gulf of Mexico have been studied by various authors (Rosales-Hoz et al 2015;Machain-Castillo et al 2019;Ayala-Pérez et al 2021;Kasper-Zubillaga et al 2021), whereas the U-Pb ages of detrital zircons from the Gulf of Mexico coastal sediments have not been studied extensively. Nevertheless, U-Pb ages of zircon grains in volcanic rocks from various terranes in Mexico such as Cuicateco, Oaxacan Complex, Xolapa Complex, Mesa Central Province, and Eastern Alkaline Province were widely studied (Solari et al 2004;Rubio-Cisneros and Lawton 2011;Lawton and Molina-Garza 2014;Juárez-Arriaga et al 2019;Sieck et al 2019;Barboza-Gudiño et al 2020;Torres-Sánchez et al 2020;Verma et al 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Provenance of sediments from Barra del Tordo and Tesoro beaches, Tamaulipas State, northwestern Gulf of Mexico

Ramos-Vázquez

Armstrong‐Altrin

2021

J. Palaeogeogr.

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The mineralogy, bulk sediment geochemical composition, and U–Pb ages of detrital zircons retrieved from the Barra del Tordo (Tordo) and Tesoro beach sediments in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico were analyzed to determine their provenance. The beach sediments are mainly composed of quartz, ilmenite, magnetite, titanite, zircon, and anorthite. The weathering proxies such as the Chemical Index of Alteration (CIA), Chemical Index of Weathering (CIW), and Plagioclase Index of Alteration (PIA), reveal a moderate-to-high intensity of weathering in the source area. The chondrite-normalized rare earth element (REE) patterns are similar to felsic igneous rocks, with large negative europium anomaly (Eu/Eu* = ~ 0.47–0.80 and ~ 0.57–0.67 in the Tordo and Tesoro beach sediments, respectively).Three major zircon U–Pb age groups are identified in the Tordo and Tesoro beach sediments, i.e., Proterozoic (~ 2039–595 Ma), Mesozoic (~ 244–70.3 Ma), and Cenozoic (~ 65.9–1.2 Ma). The differences of the zircon age spectrum between the Tordo and Tesoro beach sediments are not significant. The comparison of zircon U–Pb ages in this study with ages of potential source terranes suggests that the Mesozoic and Cenozoic zircons of the studied Tordo and Tesoro beach sediments were derived from the Eastern Alkaline Province (EAP) and Mesa Central Province (MCP). Similarly, the likely sources for the Proterozoic zircons were the Sierra Madre Oriental (SMOr) and Oaxaquia in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. The results of this study further indicate that the sediments delivered to the beaches by rivers and redistributed by longshore currents were crucial in determining the sediment provenance.

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Natural and anthropogenic oil impacts on benthic foraminifera in the southern Gulf of Mexico

Cited by 24 publications

References 41 publications

Paleoceanographic evolution of the Gulf of Tehuantepec (Mexican Pacific) during the last ~6 millennia

Paleoceanographic evolution of the Gulf of Tehuantepec (Mexican Pacific) during the last ~6 millennia

A Synthesis of Deep Benthic Faunal Impacts and Resilience Following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Provenance of sediments from Barra del Tordo and Tesoro beaches, Tamaulipas State, northwestern Gulf of Mexico

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