Subterranean Waters in Riviera Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula: Vulnerability and the Importance of Monitoring

Abstract

The Mexican Caribbean coast has great scenic beauty both on the surface and underwater, which is why it has been a developing area for tourism since the 1970s, establishing sites such as Cancun and Playa del Carmen and empowering others such as Cozumel and Tulum. Their biological richness is enormous, especially in the Mesoamerican Reef of which they are a part. However, this richness and scenic beauty are not possible without the ecological assemblages that exist within these regions’ adjacent ecosystems, mainly the surrounding seasonally dry tropical forest and the coastal wetlands that, together with the oceanographic characteristics of the Caribbean Sea, potentiate it, turning the region into the most visited in Latin America. To this end, groundwater plays a very important role in the assemblages of biotic and abiotic elements that are shared with the Caribbean Sea; thus, its constant monitoring allows us to identify how the changes that occur in the tropical forest are producing various changes in the composition and abundance of coastal reef elements. Here, we present results of our study of groundwater conditions (temp, pH, oxygen dissolved, and salinity) in nineteen cenotes and underground rivers of the Riviera Maya and six cenotes of Cozumel. We also profiled the predominant vegetation on the surface of this region, which is a seasonally dry tropical forest, to understand the components and functioning of these subterranean ecosystems to assess their vulnerability and identify their threats from human development (population growth, tourism development, mobility capacity). These threats not only affect the cave and coastal organisms but also the tropical karstic landscapes that are characteristic of these systems.