Paleoecologist / paleolimnologist Julieta Massaferro (Flag #33) researches fossil insects from lake sediments to reconstruct past environmental conditions and understand climate and other environmental changes during the Quaternary – a period that covers the last 2.6 million years. Lakes contain excellent environmental and climate change records in their shorelines, deep-basin sediments and fossil remains.

Julieta’s next expedition takes her and the WINGS flag to the southernmost tip of South America, a remote area with a complex climate around El Chaltén and Los Glaciares National Park, some 4000 km from Buenos Aires, Argentina. The area is ideal for tracking climate changes. The lakes are completely pristine and, despite recent increases in tourism, human traces are almost imperceptible, so the changes observed along the sediment cores can be attributed to climate.

Using only rucksacks to transport the research equipment, including a boat and corer, Julieta and her team must walk huge distances at high elevation to find the targeted extreme glacial lakes, where they will sample sediments to reconstruct the past environmental-climate-hydrology. In a multidisciplinary fashion, they will look at different biotic and non-biological proxies, or indicators, over time to reconstruct past environmental changes, climate changes or changes caused by human activities. A senior researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), the main government agency that fosters science and technology in Argentina, Julieta currently works at CENAC/APN in Bariloche.