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Seasonal variations with alternating dry and rainy seasons and fluctuating levels of nutrients are factors that significantly influence greenhouse gas emissions from soda lakes in the Pantanal, considered less common than emissions from freshwater lakes. The Pantanal is the world's largest tropical wetland, with an area of 153,000 km2, mostly (77.41%) in southwestern Brazil, but also partly in Bolivia (16.41%) and Paraguay (6.15%).

A study by scientists at the University of São Paulo (USP) and the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in Brazil proposes a novel perspective on the biological factors that affect these emissions and emphasizes the urgent need for more research on the topic.

There are some 900 soda lakes in the Pantanal. They are shallow and strongly alkaline, with pH levels as high as 11 and concentrations of salts such as carbonates and bicarbonates that directly influence the microbiology of the environment and its diversity of plankton.

In recent years, the Pantanal has suffered from consecutive extreme droughts and unprecedented waves of wildfires, which peaked at 22,116 in 2020. In the first eight months of 2024, there were 9,167, more than in the full 12 months of each of the previous three years, according to BDQueimadas, a wildfire database run by Brazil's National Space Research Institute (INPE).

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