Soil organic matter in the subsurface of the driest core of the Atacama Desert: Yungay, Chile

Details Soil organic matter in the subsurface of the driest core of the Atacama Desert: Yungay, Chile Soil organic matter in the subsurface of the driest core of the Atacama Desert: Yungay, Chile

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufm.p51d0947d&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #P51D-0947

Biology

5200 Planetary Sciences: Astrobiology, 6225 Mars

Scientific paper

The Atacama desert is one of the driest places on Earth. Geological studies indicate that the aridity in the region has prevailed for more than 10-15 millions years ago making it one of the oldest deserts in the world. The arid core of the Atacama Desert located in Yungay, Chile contains Mars-like soils that have undetectable bacterial populations, low organic concentrations, and the presence of a non-chirally specific oxidant (Navarro-Gonzalez, et al., 2003, Science 302, 1018-1021). Here we report a study of the organic content in the soil at various depths ranging from 10 to 140 cm in four soil pits in Yungay. For comparison we have also studied the variation of organic matter with depth in other regions of the Atacama Desert with more humidity (e.g., the Pacific Coast and about 200 km south of Yungay). The organic matter was determined by pyr-GC-MS and oxidation with potassium permanganate in aqueous medium. The results show that the organic content in the soil increases with the depth but there is variability within soil pits in the same region. We are currently characterizing the chemical nature of this subsurface organic matter.

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