On the coasts of Peru and Chile there is a cold desert called Atacama. The mountains here are extremely dry and get an average of 0.01cm of rain per year. This desert sometimes goes years without rainfall and some parts of the desert have not had rain fall for over 400 years. A lot of Atacama extends up Andes mountains and has very high elevation. Unlike other deserts Atacama is usually very cold with average tempretures of between 0°C and 25°C. Even though Atacama gets almost no rainfall, there is water in this arid place and you'll find it in some places. Such as salt lakes during years of heavy rainfall in the past, enough water accumulated in dips found throughout the Andes to create lakes. Some of the lakes got their water from melting glaciers at the end of the last ice age. But in some lakes in the Andes mountains, such as Atacama, more water is lost through evaporation than is replaced by rainfall so the lakes are drying up. As the water evaporates, the mineral salts in the water become more concentrated, creating very salty water. In the higher elevations when precipitation comes to Atacama snow falls instead of rain. There are small patches of unmelted snow in the mountain tops where it never gets warm enough to melt the snow. There are very few living creatures in Atacama but flocks of flamingos that live in and around the salt lakes feeding on red algae that grows in the waters; there are even some people living in Atacama. There is a small town called Calama in the desert which is complete with hotels restaurants and shops.
CategoriesKayleighAGE 14 Archives
June 2015
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