Río de la Plata: Aquatic plants invasion from space!
March 24, 2017
Aquatic plants detachments from floodplain lakes and wetlands in the upper Middle Paraná river drifts downstream arriving in small amounts to the Río de la Plata every year, but only huge invasions have been observed in the Río de la Plata every 10 or 15 years associated to massive floods.
Since late December 2015, heavy rains, driven by a strong El Niño, have increased river levels in La Plata basin provoking a large invasion of aquatic plants in January 2016 and causing significant disruption of human activities via clogging of drinking water intakes in the estuary, blocking of ports and marinas and introducing dangerous animals from faraway wetlands into the city.
The aquatic plant invasion of water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) that reached Buenos Aires in January 2016 was captured by different high-resolution sensors that were originally designed for land applications, like Landsat-8, PROBA-V, and the recently launched European satellite Sentinel-2A.
