AT1-10: Earth – Evolution at the dry limit.
Conveners: Tibor Dunai, Universidad de Colonia, Germany. Eduardo Campos, Universidad Católica del Norte. Sébastien Carretier IRD, Geosciences Environnement Toulouse, France. edcampos@ucn.cl
Description: The session deals with the mutual evolutionary relationships between Earth surface processes and biota in arid to hyper-arid systems, where both aspects are severely and predominantly limited by the availability of water (rather than by extreme temperatures). The objective of this session is to showcase research of the coordinated research centre CRC 1211 (https://sfb1211.uni-koeln.de/) focused on the Atacama Desert, e.g.:
- Fingerprints of biological activity in geological archives.
- Surface processes operating in the (virtual) absence of liquid water.
- Chronometric and spatial information on the colonization and radiation of biota in response to changing climate.
- Climatic records of (hyper-) arid regions.