Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Threatened Mexican oasis loses its main researcher and protector — will it survive?

Valeria Souza has long fought the drainage of the Cuatro Ciénegas basin, where ancient microbes offer clues to the origins of life.
  1. Myriam Vidal Valero
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Aerial of Cuatro Ciénegas wetland pools.

The Cuatro Ciénegas basin, in the Chihuahuan Desert in northern Mexico, holds more than 300 blue-green pools filled with bacteria and archaea. Credit: David Jaramillo

On a warm day in March, ecologist Valeria Souza went into a temazcal, or sweat lodge, in Texcoco, Mexico, to pray for the wetlands that she had been studying in the Chihuahuan Desert for the past quarter of a century. She had been performing this shamanic ceremony for years, asking for guidance to help save the scientifically treasured basin in the northern reaches of the country — known as Cuatro Ciénegas — from human exploitation. But this time was different.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 620, 255-256 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02413-y

Updates & Corrections

  • Clarification 31 July 2023: This story was updated to make clear that NASA funded researchers such as James Elser, who was at Arizona State University in Tempe in the 1990s, to study Cuatro Ciénegas.

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links