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 ...

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.

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.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

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 ...

On the arid and seemingly sterile surface of the Atacama Desert lies an invaluable treasure of history and culture: thousands of ancient geoglyphs etched on the slopes of the hills, silent witnesses ...