Oceanographic factors as modulators of biodiversity in the La Guajira upwelling system: a systematic review

Abstract

In the northern part of Colombia is the department of La Guajira, a marine-coastal area influenced by different oceanographic and atmospheric processes that give it unique characteristics. Various investigations have focused on describing the oceanography of La Guajira, in which the environmental variables respond differently according to the climatic season; however, there are few works that contrast the oceanographic processes of the area of interest with the biodiversity. The objective of this systematic review was to determine the main environmental factors that modulate the oceanography of La Guajira and to establish whether the authors link them with aspects of biodiversity. To achieve this, a search was carried out for scientific articles related to the climatology and oceanography of La Guajira, for which three world-renowned databases were consulted: Scopus, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science. Finally, it was concluded that, although several investigations have analyzed the behavior of the Caribbean Sea and the way in which its temperature, salinity and chlorophyll vary at different scales, few investigations have focused on relating these characteristics with the biodiversity of the zone; a key aspect to take into account if we think that species and ecosystems respond to the way the climate and the ocean behave.