The Conceja Lake (Lagunas de Ruidera): natural environment and subaquatic bottom
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Abstract
This paper develops an innovative geographical methodology focused in the knowledge of the natural environment in a lacustrine basin.
It merges information related to the fieldwork analysis and subaquatic observations together with the study of historical sources. This methodology duality allows providing unpublished data from the lakes bottom and allows contrasting the repercussions that the land usage of the slopes has had on them.
The methodology has been applied to the Laguna Conceja, one of the most emblematic from the Lagunas de Ruidera. However, despite of having been the subject research from various scientific perspectives, it is still necessary to know the recent evolution experienced by its surroundings, the status of the vegetation covers located on slopes and banks and the landscape of its bottom.
As a result, the morphology of the lacustrine basin, the presence of submerged tuffaceous ledges, the lutitic nature of the bottom sediments, the location of subaquatic springs and the identification of hydrophilic elements not mentioned up to the present have been determined. Finally, the aggressions suffered during the last centuries by the vegetation covers have seldom left any important accumulations of terrigenous that could threaten the filling and the future functionality of the precipitation processes in this tufa lake.