Joint Brazilian-European facility for climate and geodynamic research on the Amazon River Basin sediments

The relationship between climate, hydrology, erosion, sedimentary transport and deposition is one of the most important issues in earth sciences and may give important hints on how our planet works. Initially, it results in the formation of a drainage system, and later, in a sedimentary basin that encompasses complex and diverse ecosystems. One of the main scientific challenges nowadays includes the understanding of the dynamic processes involved in large drainage systems and the determination of the sedimentary sources, transport and accumulation of large basins.

While monitoring the water discharge, water quality, sedimentary load, and role of the floodplain by the ORE-HYBAM (Observatoire de Recherches en Environnement sur l’Hydrologie du Bassin AMazonien), we have improved significantly our understanding on the hydrogeochemistry of the Amazon River Basin (Barroux et al., 2006; Guyot et al., 2007; Bonnet et al., 2008; Viers et al., 2008; Roux et al., 2010). But not much is known about the past climatic history of the region, from the Andes to the Ocean (Cordeiro et al., 2011). This could be unraveled from a detailed study of the sedimentary record of the Amazon River Basin that has been so far little studied using modern geochemical approaches. This is CLIM-AMAZON scientific purpose.