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San Pedro de Atacama Region Geography
 Introduction The Norte Grande, or Far North, extends from the Peruvian border to about 27° south latitude, a line roughly paralleled by the Copiapó River, and is characterised by an extremely arid. The region is dominated by the Atacama Desert, the driest area in the world and an almost complete lack of precipitation throughout the year - some weather stations in the Atacama have never received rain. Contrary to the image of a barren and desolate landscape that most people associate with deserts, the landscape is spectacular, with its criss-crossing hills and mountains, each with a unique hue depending on its mineral composition, its distance from the observer and the time of day. The north of Chile also corresponds to the highest areas of the country - the Andean or Altiplanic Highlands, a wide region of volcanic mountains, dominating the landscape with their eruptives and lava flows, of salt basins, flats and lakes (salars), and where the country is also at its widest point. The Altiplano area holds beautiful lakes and lagoons, such as Lago Chungará, one of the larger highest lakes in the world, at 4,517m, located in the Tarapacá (I) Region of Chile. The majority of the human population lives in the coastal area, and the regional capital Antofagasta where the temperatures are more moderate and the humidity higher. Average monthly temperatures range at sea level between about 20.5°C during the summer and about 14°C during the winter. The average rainfall in the Chilean region of Antofagasta is just 1 mm per year. San Pedro Region See the Chile Geography section for background information on the Andes Cordillera. In the San Pedro region the Andes average in height some 5,300 metres above sea level (masl). Large volcanoes dominate the landscape - Volcán Llullaillaco (6,739 m) is the second highest active volcano in the world, surpassed only by Ojos del Salado (6,891 m), located in Chile's Chico Norte. Others include Volcán Acamarachi, also known as Pili (6,046 m), Aguas Calientes (5,924 m), Volcán Licancabur (5,916 m), Volcán Miñiques (5,910 m), Volcán Lascar (5,154 m) - one of the most active volcanoes in the region - and the extensive stratavocanoes of Volcán Pular (6,233 m) and Volcán Socompa (6,051 m). At this point the Andes are split, with three wide separate ranges which divide this relief and also create a high intermediate plateau, known as the altiplano (or puna plateau), averaging 4,700 masl. Geothermic activity creates many hot springs and areas of geysers. The local climate is extremely dry (with little or no annual rainfall recorded in the town itself) and mild, with daytime temperatures between 25-30 degrees Celsius (77-86°F) in the summer (December to February) and 18-25 degrees Celsius (64-77°F) in the winter (June to August). Night-time temperatures routinely drop below zero and can reach as low as -10°C (14°F) in the winter. Between January and March, the so called 'Altiplanic Winter' comes from the east bringing thunder-storms, hail and rain to the mountains. The Atacama Desert The Atacama Desert is a virtually rainless plateau, extending from the Andes mountains to the Pacific Ocean, an area covering 181,300 square kilometres and is estimated to be 15 million years old and reportedly 100 times more arid than California's Death Valley. Parts of the region are known to geographers as 'absolute desert', with no life or organic matter present. In some areas of this desert no drops of rain have fallen in recorded history, and scientists believe these hyper-arid conditions have lasted some 20 million years, making it the driest place on Earth, and allowing the surface accumulation of chemicals and minerals which are normally dissolved and washed away. The Atacama Desert is so sterile because it is blocked from precipitation moisture on both sides by the Andes mountains and by the Chilean Coastal Range. The cold Humboldt Current and the Pacific Anticyclone oceanic systems are also essential to the dry climate of the Atacama region. The average rainfall for the Chilean region of Antofagasta is just 1 mm per year and some weather stations in the Atacama have never received rain. Studies by a group of British scientists have suggested that some river beds have been dry for 120,000 years. It is so arid that mountains reaching as high as 6,885 metres are completely free of glaciers and, in the southern part from 25°S to 27°S, may have been glacier-free throughout the Quaternary -- though permafrost extends down to an altitude of 4,400 metres and is continuous above 5,600 metres. In the South American tropics mountain glaciers are generally found above 4,800 metres. Some coastal locations in the Atacama do receive a marine fog known locally as the Camanchaca, providing sufficient moisture for hypolithic algae, lichens and even some cacti. But in the region that is in the 'fog shadow' of the high coastal cordillera crest-line, which averages 3,000 m height for about 100 km south of Antofagasta, the soil has been compared to that of Mars. In 2003, a team of researchers published a report in Science magazine in which they duplicated the tests used by the Viking Mars Landers to detect life, and were unable to detect any signs in Atacama Desert soil. The region may be unique on Earth in this regard and is still being used by NASA to test instruments for future Mars missions. The Atacama has rich deposits of copper and other minerals, and the world's largest natural supply of sodium nitrate, which was mined on a large scale until the early 1940s. Today the region's main economic foundation is its great mineral wealth. For instance, Chuquicamata, world's largest open-pit copper mine, and Escondida, the largest producing open-pit copper mine in the world. The European Southern Observatory operates two major observatories in the Atacama Desert, the La Silla Observatory, and the Paranal Observatory, which includes the VLT or Very Large Telescope. A new radio astronomy observatory, called ALMA, is being built in the Atacama Desert by astronomers from Europe, Japan, and North America. The Pan-American Highway runs through the Atacama in a north-south trajectory.
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