Researchers of the IDL on Fieldworks in Tunisia

Researchers of the Instituto Dom Luiz (IDL) were in a fieldwork campaign in the Hachichina Coast, SE Tunisia. The works were developed under the scientific project “Wetlands vulnerability. Impact of pollution, climate change and extreme events. The case of Hachichina coast (Gulf of Gabes)”. Based on the study of sedimentary records, this project intends to reconstruct the climatic environmental changes and the variability on hydrological systems of this geographical area for the past 4000 years. This will allow to analyze the impact of sea level changes on the coast, which is essential to understand and therefore foreseeing its future evolution. Through a multidisciplinary approach, using stratigraphic, geochemical, morphological and instrumented data, this project proposes to study the recent spatio-temporal evolution of specific sectors of the Hachichina Coast, to advance knowledge on climatic events (including extremes) recorded in Tunisian lagoons during the Middle and Upper Holocene and highlight the impact of pollution on the biodiversity of the Hachichina wetland. Other main objectives of the project are to promote methodologies and know-how exchange between Tunisian and Portuguese research groups, to test and eventually enlarge to the Mediterranean area the scope of paleoenvironmental models previously developed for the Atlantic Iberia coastal façade.

The international research team is led by Conceição Freitas and counts with participation of other IDL researchers, César Andrade, Pedro Costa and Ana Maria Costa.

Keywords: Sediments; foraminifera/ostracods; geochemistry; sedimentology