Sea Level Change as a Forcing Function of Anchialine Cave Environment's Readjustment in the Humid Tropics of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean

摘要

A rise of the sea level between 0.15 and 0.27 m would be expected in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean by 2100. Previous work has suggested future submergence of mangroves in the wider Caribbean region based on historical and geological rates of peat accretion. Less attention has been devoted to the effect of changing sea level on specific aspects related with the stability of coastal karst ecosystems and specifically with cave environments. The expected sea level raise will produce a combinationof the following effects over the coastal cave environments and its support system like: the disappearance of stable cave ecosystems including anchialine cave environments; the extinction, disappearance or at least in the best scenario a migration of aquatic cave populations to connected inland aquifers; major changes in groundwater chemical composition which in turn affects the mass fluxes in karst ecosystems sand the loss of connections to the surface and among caves producing some sort of genetic isolation or recolonization of reflooded caves by troglobites. Those effects will be particularly enhanced in the case of anchialine caves because of their particular hidrodynamics and biochemistry and are discussed in this contribution.