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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.
By
  1. Myriam Vidal Valero
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.

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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.

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