cuda-natury: Salar de Uyuni

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world, with an area of approximately 10,582 square kilometres (4,086 mi2). It is situated in southwestern Bolivia, within the Daniel Campos Province of the Potosí Department, near the crest of the Andes Mountains, at an elevation of 3,656 m (11,995 ft) above sea level. The Salar was formed as a result of transformations of seven Late Pleistocene lakes whose progressive desiccation led to the accumulation of extensive evaporitic salt deposits. It is now covered by an 8-meter-thick layer of salt, which is extremely flat. The average elevation varies by less than one meter over the entire area of the Salar. The crust serves as a source of salt and…

Evidence: 20 • authority: 72

Tomás Saraceno (born 1973) is an Argentine contemporary artist whose projects consist of floating sculptures, international collaborations, and interactive installations. For more than two decades, Saraceno has activated projects aimed towards an ethical collaboration with the atmosphere, including the sculpture series Cloud Cities (2002–) and Museo Aero Solar (2007–), a community-organised initiative that transforms waste plastic bags into flying, aerosolar sculptures. These projects later grew into the Aerocene Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to community building, scientific research and artistic experiences. Together with Saraceno in 2020, Aerocene launched the certified,…

Evidence: 20 • authority: 88

16S rRNA Gene Diversity in the Salt Crust of Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, the World’s Largest Salt Flat. Salar de Uyuni is a vast, high-altitude salt flat in Bolivia with extreme physico-geochemical properties approaching multiple limits of life. Evidence for diverse halophilic bacteria and archaea was found in its surface and near-surface salt crust using 16S amplicon analysis, providing a snapshot of prokaryotic life.

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Lake Tauca is a former lake in the Altiplano of Bolivia. It is also known as Lake Pocoyu for its constituent lakes: Lake Poopó, Salar de Coipasa and Salar de Uyuni. At high water levels, the lake spread across the southern Altiplano between the Eastern and Western Cordilleras, flooding the basins that now hold Lake Poopó and the Uyuni and Coipasa salars. Published area estimates range from about 48,000 to 80,000 square kilometres (19,000 to 31,000 sq mi). Water levels varied, possibly reaching about 3,800 metres (12,500 ft) above sea level. It was a saline lake. The lake received water from Lake Titicaca, although estimates of Titicaca's contribution vary widely. In any case, Tauca was larg…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is an astronomical observatory under construction. When completed, it will be the world's largest optical and mid-infrared extremely large telescope. Part of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) agency, it is located on top of Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, 23 km from the existing facilities at Paranal Observatory. The design consists of a reflecting telescope with a 39.3-metre-diameter (130-foot) segmented primary mirror and a 4.25 m (14 ft) diameter secondary mirror. The telescope is equipped with adaptive optics, six laser guide star units, and various large-scale scientific instruments. The observatory's design will gather…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Lithium Triangle (Spanish: Triángulo del Litio) is a region of the Andes that is rich in lithium reserves, encompassed by the borders of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. The lithium in the triangle is concentrated in various salt pans that exist along the Atacama Desert and neighboring arid areas. The three main salt pans that define its vertices are the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, Salar de Atacama in Chile, and Salar del Hombre Muerto in Argentina. Of these, the core of Salar de Atacama in Chile has the highest concentration of lithium (0.15% by weight) among all world's brine sources. The shape of the area of interest for lithium resources in salt pans is however not a triangle but more…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. Its geography primarily consists of an Andean region to the west and tropical lowlands to the east and north. The country has a diverse environment, including the vast Amazonian plain, the Gran Chaco, temperate valleys, the high-altitude Altiplano plateau, snow-capped peaks, and mountains, encompassing a wide range of climates and biomes across its regions and cities. It includes part of the Pantanal, the largest tropical wetland in the world, along its eastern border. Bolivia is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay to the southeast, Argentina to the south, Chile t…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Bolivian natural zeolite as a low-cost adsorbent for the adsorption of cadmium: Isotherms and kinetics.. Population growth in recent years has led to increased wastewater production and pollution of water resources. This situation also heavily affects Bolivia, so wastewater treatment methods and materials suitable for Bolivian society should be explored. This study investigated the natural Bolivian Zeolite (BZ) and its NaCl-modified structure (NaBZ) as adsorbents for cadmium removal from water. The natural BZ and the modified form NaBZ were investigated by different physicochemical characterization techniques. Furthermore, XPS and FT-IR techniques were used to investigate the adsorption mec…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Identifying knowledge gaps in hypersaline systems supporting the global electrical transition: invertebrate community structure in salars from the lithium triangle.. Following decades of mining impacts, South America's hypersaline wetlands (salars) face increasing threats from lithium extraction to support global decarbonisation. Although globally important, salars are understudied and information needed to understand environmental impacts is lacking. Modern ecological studies on salars have focused on microbial community composition and function but other taxa are less studied, including resident and migratory reptiles and birds and their aquatic invertebrate prey. Given the scale and imme…