What is the importance of the Atacama Desert?

What is the importance of the Atacama Desert?

The Atacama Desert is the center of copper mining in Chile and also has commercial gold and silver mines. Owing to recent demands for lithium, mining also extends to the salt-rich brines, which are the world’s second-largest reserve.

Why Atacama is the driest desert in the world?

The Valley of the Moon, with Licancábur volcano in the background, Atacama Desert, Chile. Dry subsidence created by the South Pacific high-pressure cell makes the desert one of the driest regions in the world.

Does anyone live in the Atacama Desert?

Over one million people currently do. In fact, the Atacama Desert has been inhabited for many years. The Atacameño people were the first known to dwell there. Today, people living in this desert grow olives, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

How would you describe the Atacama Desert?

The Atacama Desert is a narrow strip of desert along the northwest coast of Chile. It extends nearly 1600 km and reaches a maximum width of 180 km. In many areas rainfall has never been recorded. Consequently, an extremely arid, almost barren, landscape predominates.

Why does the Atacama Desert receive almost no rainfall?

This dry air has almost no water vapor so it can be easily heated by the sun, causing high ground temperatures with very low humidity. Another reason that the Atacama doesn’t get enough rainfall is because of a phenomenon called rainshadow.

Why was the Atacama Desert formed?

Once they have passed the Andes, the clouds no longer have water and there is no possibility of rainfall to the other side. This complete blockage of precipitation coming from the east, has caused over thousands of years, the formation of the Atacama Desert.

What is the culture in the Atacama Desert?

Atacama, also called Atacameño, orCunza, extinct South American Indian culture of the Andean desert oases of northern Chile and northwestern Argentina. The last surviving groups of the Atacama have been assimilated by Spanish and Aymara culture.

What is the Atacama Desert climate?

Old, hot and dry In other deserts around the world, like the Sahara, the mercury can soar above 130 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius). But temperatures in the Atacama are comparatively mild throughout the year. The average temperature in the desert is about 63 degrees F (18 degrees C).

Is the Atacama Desert a hot or cold desert?

The Atacama is the driest hot desert in the world. There are some weather stations in the Atacama where there has never been any rain! Not all deserts are hot. The Dry Valleys in Antarctica are cold deserts. They are the driest deserts on Earth.

Why is the Atacama Desert one of the driest places on Earth?

The Atacama Desert, Chile: the Driest Desert on Earth – Five Reasons Why. The cold, humid air produced by the sea stays down along the coastline by the effect of the hot air masses of the continent, not just reducing the moisture in the air but also creating nearly 350 days of clear skies inland.

Atacama Desert. Located in the longest region of the North of Chile. Antofagasta , one of the oldest cities of the country, is the most important marine port in the north of Chile; it was used as a unload port for the Chilean nitrate; this region was founded by Chileans in 1870 to exploit the nitrate in the Atacama Desert.

What is the Atacama desert’s geographic significance?

The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in the world, as well as the only true desert to receive less precipitation than the polar deserts and the largest fog desert in the world. Both regions have been used as experimentation sites on Earth for Mars expedition simulations.