RT Journal Article
T1 Acid Mine Drainage as Energizing Microbial Niches for the Formation of Iron Stromatolites: The Tintillo River in Southwest Spain
A1 Chacon Baca, Elizabeth
A1 Grande, Jose Antonio
A1 Santos, Ana Alexandra Guerreiro dos
A1 Miguel Sarmiento, Aguasanta
A1 Luís, Ana Teresa
A1 Santisteban Fernández, María
A1 Fortes Garrido, Juan Carlos
A1 Dávila Martín, José Miguel
A1 Díaz Curiel, Jesús
A1 Grande Gil, José Antonio
K1 Biología
K1 Ingeniería Ambiental
AB The Iberian Pyrite Belt in southwest Spain hosts some of the largest and diverse extreme acidic environments with textural variation across rapidly changing biogeochemical gradients at multiple scales. After almost three decades of studies, mostly focused on molecular evolution and metagenomics, there is an increasing awareness of the multidisciplinary potential of these types of settings, especially for astrobiology. Since modern automatized exploration on extraterrestrial surfaces is essentially based on the morphological recognition of biosignatures, a macroscopic characterization of such sedimentary extreme environments and how they look is crucial to identify life properties, but it is a perspective that most molecular approaches frequently miss.Although acid mine drainage (AMD) systems are toxic and contaminated, they offer at the same time the bioengineering tools for natural remediation strategies. This work presents a biosedimentological  haracterization of the clastic iron stromatolites in the Tintillo river. They occur as laminated terraced iron formations that are the most distinctive sedimentary facies at the Tintillo river, which is polluted by AMD. Iron stromatolites originate from fluvial abiotic factors that interact with biological zonation. The authigenic precipitation of schwertmannite and jarosite results from microbial–mineral interactions between mineral and organic matrices. The Tintillo iron stromatolites are composed of bacterial filaments and diatoms as Nitzschia aurariae, Pinnularia aljustrelica, Stauroneis kriegeri, and Fragilaria sp. Furthermore, the active biosorption and bioleaching of sulfur are suggested by the black and white coloration of microbial filaments inside stromatolites. AMD systems are hazardous due to physical, chemical, and biological agents, but they also provide biogeochemical sources with which to infer past geochemical conditions on Earth and inform exploration efforts on extraterrestrial surfaces in the future.
PB Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
SN 1531-1074
SN 1557-8070  (electrónico)
YR 2021
FD 2021-03
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/25536
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/25536
LA eng
NO Chacon-Baca, E., Santos, A., Sarmiento, A. M., Luís, A. T., Santisteban, M., Fortes, J. C., Dávila, J. M., Diaz-Curiel, J. M., & Grande, J. A. (2021). Acid Mine Drainage as Energizing Microbial Niches for the Formation of Iron Stromatolites: The Tintillo River in Southwest Spain. Astrobiology, 21(4), 443–463. https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2019.2164
NO This paper was partially supported by Research Project CGL2015-66835-P of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain. Publication costs were partially covered by UANL-PAICyT CN1246-20.
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 30 may 2026