Flamingos could also be a form of canary within the coal mine in the case of warning of a hidden value of inexperienced applied sciences. Lithium mining seems to be a serious menace to the long-lasting pink birds that depend on ecologically fragile salt flats bordering the excessive Andes Mountains. Mining of the metallic and local weather change collectively are inflicting the decline of two flamingo species discovered solely on Andean plateaus, researchers report March 9 within the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Lithium, utilized in light-weight, rechargeable batteries for electrical automobiles, smartphones and different gadgets, is anticipated to play a serious position in serving to struggle local weather change. Within the following decade or so, world demand for the metallic is estimated to quadruple (SN: 5/7/19). The new discovering highlights that the hunt for lithium isn’t with out drawbacks, becoming right into a rising physique of analysis revealing lithium mining’s adversarial impacts on ecosystems.
One of the world’s richest deposits of lithium spans elements of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, an space typically known as the “lithium triangle.” The area can also be dwelling to the Atacama Desert plateau, one of many driest locations on Earth, and hosts a sequence of shallow, salt flat lake ecosystems that rely upon the restricted water provide. These ecologically delicate “salares” nourish cyanobacteria and diatom algae, which in flip are eaten by three forms of flamingos, half of the world’s flamingo species.
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This fragile ecosystem is now in an existential battle as a result of lithium refinement ponds and different industrial mining processes use an enormous quantity of water — an estimated 400,000 liters per ton of lithium, says Nathan Senner, a inhabitants ecologist on the University of South Carolina in Columbia.
And there’s solely a lot water to go round. “This is literally the driest desert in the world,” Senner says. “Much of that [mining] water has to come from groundwater.”
Senner — with ecologist Jorge Gutiérrez of the University of Extremadura in Spain and chicken ecologist Juan Navedo of the Austral University of Chile in Valdivia and others — gathered over 30 years’ price of flamingo surveys. The researchers additionally examined satellite tv for pc imagery monitoring water floor space modifications in 5 salt flats within the Chilean portion of the lithium triangle. And the group tracked cyanobacteria ranges utilizing satellite tv for pc information, together with climatic components that might affect the salt flats’ water ranges, resembling precipitation and temperature.
Senner and his colleagues discovered that since 1984, the 5 salares have every shrunk by at the least 30 p.c in floor space, partially as a consequence of elevated evaporation, which is influenced by climatic components like wind, humidity and temperature. The group additionally discovered that there’s quite a lot of variability in water degree between years. And these fluctuations seem to strongly dictate the variety of flamingos in a given 12 months by figuring out the provision of the birds’ meals.
Flamingo counts “can change by literally thousands of individuals across just a couple of years,” Senner says.
The long-term drying pattern from local weather change, which can cut back general availability of meals for flamingos, is being exacerbated by ever-thirsty lithium mining, the group says. And it’s leaving a mark on two of the flamingo species: the Andean (Phoenicoparrus andinus) and the James’ (P. jamesi) flamingos, whose populations declined 12 p.c and 10 p.c over 11 years, respectively, in Chile’s Salar de Atacama. This is a lack of lots of of birds.
The group ties this decline on to lithium mining. As the mining ponds grew within the Salar, close by James’ and Andean flamingo populations dwindled in tight correlation. Water loss from new mining exercise could also be a serious offender. Between 1986 and 2018, the groundwater pumping for lithium manufacturing elevated from zero to 1.8 cubic meters per second. Simultaneously, the Salar misplaced about 5 soccer fields’ price of floor space yearly.
In Chile’s Salar de Atacama, briny groundwater is pumped into ponds on the floor, abandoning lithium salts after evaporating. The growth of lithium mining and related ponds (the darkish blue rectangles) within the Salar in latest many years could be seen in satellite tv for pc imagery. Pull the slider to the suitable for a view of the Salar in 1993, and left for 2015.
Both: USGS
Though the declines didn’t happen over your complete area, the findings are particularly regarding for these two species as a result of they don’t stay anyplace else on this planet. “They are entirely wedded to these saline lakes,” Senner says.
Flamingo declines and salar drying might have reverberating results on folks too because the widespread, flamingo-based ecotourism within the area would in all probability endure, the group says.
“Science-based conservation management guidelines might still allow future preservation of some key hypersaline systems in the region,” says Mattia Saccò, an ecologist at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, who was not concerned with the analysis. But, Saccò provides, warming and mining will very doubtless trigger the lack of complete inland salty ecosystems in some locations.
As the necessity for lithium is ready to rise to be used in applied sciences like electrical autos, the menace to the flamingos could solely improve.
“It’s a real conundrum because obviously no one is going to argue that climate change is not this monster that we need to contend with,” Senner says. Still, as this research suggests, the applied sciences that might assist humankind fight local weather change could have their very own suite of unfavourable ecological results. Being conscious of these penalties goes to be essential to weighing the prices and advantages of such options, Senner says.
Finding methods to cut back these ecological prices may very well be one useful method ahead, he says, notably by making lithium mining extra water environment friendly or bettering the flexibility to recycle lithium from used batteries.
