22-EPN3-005: Spatial Relationship Between Biosignatures and Their Geologic Context by Large-scale Geoscientific Mapping at Rio Tinto, Spain
Visit by Alessandro Frigeri (INAF, Italy) and Giacomo Panza (intern at INAF, University of Bologna, Italy) to TA1.2 Rio Tinto (Spain).
Dates of visit: 07-11 November 2023
Report Summary: Since the early 2000’s, Rio Tinto has been a critical witness plate for the investigation of extremophiles and it is recognized to be a mineralogical and geochemical analog of Mars (Amils et al., 2014). The Mars Analog Rio Tinto Experiment (MARTE), in particular, demonstrated that the Rio Tinto biosphere extends at least 900 meters below the land surface with a high potential of anaerobic microorganisms to be present (Stoker et al., 2008). Host rocks, however, are exposed at the surface in sediments and rocks of the Rio Tinto watershed, providing potential for key investigations.
The Rio Tinto 2023 field campaign was held between November 7th and November 18th 2023 at Rio Tinto Terrestrial Analogue. The campaign team was made by Alessandro Frigeri (INAF, Italy), James Skinner (USGS, US), Giacomo Panza (undergrad student at University of Bologna, intern at INAF) and Felipe Gomez as the TA Field expert (Centro de Astrobiologia, Madrid).
The campaign focused on geologic surveying and mapping the spatial relationship of the rocks where extremophile life develops today and has evolved through the geologic times. When bacteria proliferate within a solid media in a natural environment, microbial life alters the hosting environment chemically and physically. When the hosting media are soils and rocks, geological aspects like color, grain size, texture, and composition will be altered by the presence of life. Before the campaign, the team prepared a context cartographic base from remote sensing data from which they defined three sites of interest with different geological characteristics where to observe and map biosignatures.
In the field, the team applied traditional geological field large-scale mapping techniques coupled with photogrammetric drone surveys and drafted specific geoscientific mapping themes describing the geospatial setting of biosignatures at Rio Tinto Planetary Field Analogue in Spain.
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