The Atacama Desert - Community
The Atacama Desert is one of the driest places of earth, it is hard to survive in the Atacama Desert though few people, animals, plants and even microbes live there. Places like the Atacama Desert where life struggles to get by are called extreme environments, though how do living things survive there? well so things can get moisture from the fog that rolls off the pacific ocean. Some types of algae, lichens and cacti get water this way. Types of microbes live under rocks or in tiny spaces between rocks to get moisture, so these "homes"protect the microbes from all of the heat and dryness of the Atacama Desert.
People live and work over in the Atacama Desert because there has been lots of mining over the years, over the years the Atacama Desert has had silver there since the 18th centuries, though these days there are lots of copper mines in the Atacama desert. for many years people mined a chemical called sodium nitrate which was used to make fertilizers and explosives. Bolivia, Peru and Chile fought a war (know as the war of the Pacific) in the late 1800s for the nitrate deposits. There are several cities along the Pacific Ocean, near the Atacama desert as they are ports that ships mining products to other places.
People that live in the Atacama Desert have a strange way of getting water. There is a village in northern Chile called Chungungo and they use nets to collect water from fog that rolls in from banks near the Pacific Ocean.
People do astronomy and space exploration from the Atacama Desert because there are usually few clouds and almost no light pollution in the Atacama Desert. European Southern Observatory has several large telescopes in Chile. The extreme dryness of the Atacama Desert in close to the surface of Mars. Scientists sometimes even test robots and sensors in the Atacama Desert before sending them to Mars. Since even microbes are rare in the Atacama Desert it makes for a good place to test instruments to be used and a tool to find life on other planets. As well as that there have been many asteroids found in the Atacama Desert.
People live and work over in the Atacama Desert because there has been lots of mining over the years, over the years the Atacama Desert has had silver there since the 18th centuries, though these days there are lots of copper mines in the Atacama desert. for many years people mined a chemical called sodium nitrate which was used to make fertilizers and explosives. Bolivia, Peru and Chile fought a war (know as the war of the Pacific) in the late 1800s for the nitrate deposits. There are several cities along the Pacific Ocean, near the Atacama desert as they are ports that ships mining products to other places.
People that live in the Atacama Desert have a strange way of getting water. There is a village in northern Chile called Chungungo and they use nets to collect water from fog that rolls in from banks near the Pacific Ocean.
People do astronomy and space exploration from the Atacama Desert because there are usually few clouds and almost no light pollution in the Atacama Desert. European Southern Observatory has several large telescopes in Chile. The extreme dryness of the Atacama Desert in close to the surface of Mars. Scientists sometimes even test robots and sensors in the Atacama Desert before sending them to Mars. Since even microbes are rare in the Atacama Desert it makes for a good place to test instruments to be used and a tool to find life on other planets. As well as that there have been many asteroids found in the Atacama Desert.