The ecohydrological challenge of woody-herbaceous transitions in the Chaco-Pampas plains

Abstract

In sedimentary regions like the Chaco-Pampa plains, characterized by a very low regional topographic gradient (<0.1%), the networks of surface water and salt evacuation towards the ocean are poor and water excesses often translate into flooding and salt redistribution. Based on local and global experience we review the risks, challenges, and uncertainties opened by two vegetation transformations, dry forest replacement by agriculture and the conversion of grasslands to tree plantations, on the hydrological regulation and soil and water salinization of flat sedimentary landscapes. Evidence from dry forests, similar to those of the Espinal and Chaco, in Australia, Africa and North America suggests that their massive replacement by dryland crops causes water table level raises and salt transport towards the surface. These forests use precipitation inputs exhaustively, generating negligible deep drainage fluxes, being able to accumulate salts of atmospheric origin and those derived from rock weathering within their soils for millennia, and maintaining deep groundwater levels. The establishment of dryland agriculture generates strong deep drainage increases followed by gradual raises of groundwater level and the mobilization of salts that end affecting soil fertility at the regional scale after many decades, when water tables and the mobilized salts reach the surface. In the Espinal of Argentina we verified the negligible recharge typical of other dry forests and the storage of salts in the vadose zone (0.25 to 7 kg Cl^- /m² from 0 to 6 m of depth) and their leaching following agricultural use of these lands. This process may be related to the flooding and salinization phenomena observed in the Chaco and Espinal. In subhumid grasslands, like those in the Pampas, water table levels are naturally close to the surface and groundwater redistributes salts towards the lowest landscape positions. The localized water balance shifts, imposed by tree plantations established in these grasslands alter groundwater dynamics through its consumption generating an intense water and soil salinization process. This negative impact takes place under subhumid climates where tree plantations are able to switch the net water flux between ecosystems and groundwater, and under mid to coarse textured sediments, capable of maintaining a good supply of water towards the afforested stands. Salinization increases when the tolerance of tree species is higher. The regional topography of the Chaco-Pampa plains would lead towards a strong effect of land use changes on vertical and horizontal groundwater and intense salt transport in an intense and hard to anticipate way. This hydrological vulnerability requires a better understanding and management of the water and salt cycles from an ecohydrological perspective and possess the challenge of developing an “agronomy of water” capable to contribute to the regulation of water table levels through management of both natural and cultivated ecosystems.