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Landscape of the Atacama Desert at San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
Author: Entropy1963 (public domain)
Atacama Desert is the driest desert in the world. It covers an area of 105,000 sq km (40,541 sq mi) on the leeward side of the Chilean Coast Range, in northern Chile. The desert is composed on salt basins and felsic lava flows. Some places of the Atacama Desert do not get any moisture at all, as it is blocked on both sides, by the Andes mountains and by the Chilean Coast Range. The biggest city in the area, Antofagasta, receives just 1 mm (0.04 in) of rail per year. There are places in the Atacama Desert never to have recorded receiving any rain. As a result of this dryness, some of its mountains even to a height of 6,885 m (22,589 ft) are free of glaciers (even though there is permafrost extending down to the altitude of 4,400 m).
The terrain of the Atacama Desert
Author: Calton (public domain)
Despite the harsh climate, the Atacama Desert is not completely uninhabited. Interestingly, the desert has oases and valleys that have supported a sparse population for thousands of years, including some of the most advanced pre-Hispanic civilizations in Chile.
There are a few cities within the Atacama Desert area, among them Antofagasta, Calama, Iquique and La Serena. These came into being under the Spanish Empire, when the area is found to be rich in minerals, particularly sodium nitrate and silver, and mines were established to extract them. The area was originally controlled by Bolivia, but was annexed by Chile following the war in 1879-1883 (War of the Pacific).
A lizard in the Atacama Desert
Author: Andrew Dunn (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)
Today the Atacama Desert is littered with some 170 abandoned mines, since the invention of synthetic nitrate brought a collapse in prices.
Cities in the Atacama Desert area
- Antofagasta
- Arica
- Calama
- Chañaral
- Copiapo
- Coquimbo
- Iquique
- La Serena
- San Pedro de Atacama
UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the Atacama Desert
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