Center and right: Salt, a byproduct of the brine evaporation process, is piled up at the Albemarle lithium mine in the Atacama Desert on Aug. 24. Paz Olivares Droguett for NPR hide caption ...

Chile's Atacama desert is best known for its salt lagoons in the north, but head to the Mar de Dunas in the southern part and you will be rewarded with perfect wind-sculptured wave patterns as far ...

The Atacama Desert of Chile is known as the Saudi Arabia of the electric vehicle industry. It is one of the largest lithium reserves in the world, with an estimated 8 million tons.

ATACAMA DESERT, Chile — At the top of a craggy path in Socaire, ... the closest town to the lithium mining operations, in the Atacama Salt Flat on Saturday 12 of April, 2024.

In the Chilean desert, stargazers want to dim the lights on a mining boom. By Laura Bliss and James Attwood Photographs by Cristóbal Olivares June 20, 2024, 7:00 AM UTC ...

Residents of the world's driest desert, the Atacama in northern Chile, woke up Thursday to a jaw-dropping spectacle: its ...

He adds that the Atacama salt flat is a “unique ecosystem” as it’s connected to the eastern, southern and western edges of the desert. For Chocobar, the Indigenous guardian, there’s little ...

But lithium mining in Chile involves pumping huge amounts of groundwater out from under the desert, potentially damaging ecosystems. The quest for decarbonization may leave new scars on the ...

S ince the 1960s, the Atacama Desert has been an important hub for international astronomy. Today, the region, which boasts more than 300 clear nights per year, hosts some of the world’s most ...

Effects of trade and poaching pressure on extinction risk for cacti in the Atacama Desert. Conservation Biology . Vol. 38, October 2024, e14353. doi: 10.1111/cobi.14353.

Mining has made its mark all through the Atacama Desert. Viewed from space, the Salar de Atacama, a salt flat nearly four times the size of New York City, displays the pale-hued swatches of ...

In the 1800s, dozens of small mining towns—now abandoned—were built here and there in the desert, along with a railway. In 1915, the Chuquicamata mine, which would become one of the world’s ...