Water pathways and ancient lakes: Flowing towards new models to unravel the past

Abstract Significant progress has been made in understanding lake basin evolution through climatic and tectonic changes using sedimentology, sequence stratigraphy, geochemistry, hydrology and watershed characteristics to interpret three main lake basin types: overfilled, balanced‐fill and underfilled, including fluvio‐lacustrine systems. Groundwater constraints, however, have been mostly overlooked, especially as they affect the formation and preservation of climate‐sensitive indicators (‘proxies’). The incorporation of subsurface water flow factors into lake basin analysis has led to the realisation that more diverse and complex facies associations can result from its influence, particularly in balanced‐fill and underfilled lake basins. Better understanding of palaeohydrogeology of lacustrine systems results from integrated analysis, including sediment and water delivery pathways, components of potential accommodation and conditions in the lake water column studied in modern lakes and ancient lake strata representing deep‐time lacustrine basins. This special issue intends to act as a pivotal point for future studies on limnogeology. Our goal is to improve our understanding of water delivery pathways (precipitation, overland, groundwater) into fluvio‐lacustrine basins, their influences on such systems and their record of climate and tectonics and to update the existing models for them. The integration of the full range of variables holds great promise to help us better constrain controls and factors affecting the evolution of inland water systems through time and space, to Mars and beyond.