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 ...

The Atacama Desert is a major source of lithium for EV batteries. As global demand ramps up, the local Lickanantay people are racing to protect already scarce water supplies and their way of life.

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.

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 ...

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 ...