The Atri hot spring in Odisha-A natural ecosystem for global warming research

Abstract

Global warming has been a challenging environmental problem in the recent decades. For managing and surviving the negative impacts of high temperature stress, specific preventive measures need to be developed. The organisms constantly exposed to high temperature stress, like fishes inhabiting the hot- spring runoffs might be able to provide insights and clues to develop strategies to cope with the climate extremes like high-temperature stress. The Atri hot spring located in eastern India appears to be a natural ecosystem for global warming research. The hot spring runoff joins to a nearby rivulet thereby providing connectivity to the hot spring water. A variety of aquatic flora and fauna including fish are found to inhabit this place and these organisms could be useful for understanding the mechanism of thermal acclimation and thermotolerance. Fishes present in the hot spring runoff can be utilized for investigating physical, biochemical and metabolomic responses to the adaptation pressure and the prevailing high temperature stress as observed in our preliminary investigations. The rivulet is relatively free from pollution as anthropogenic activities are less and it is not receiving effluents; thus temperature is the major abiotic stress. All these factors make the Atri hot spring an ideal, natural ecosystem for global warming research and it could perhaps be developed as a ‘hot spring research laboratory’