Bolivia’s
Lake Poopo was once a fountain of life for local inhabitants, who
fished from its teeming waters and farmed along its banks. Now it is a
desert. Scientists
say the one-time lake, which sprawls across Bolivia’s sun-drenched,
high-altitude altiplano, has fallen victim to decades of water diversion
for regional irrigation needs. And a warmer, drier climate has made its
recovery increasingly unlikely.
“It’s like a perfect storm,” says Jorge Molina, a researcher with the Universidad Mayor de San Andres.
[…] The
lake, Bolivia’s second largest, is very shallow, and has traditionally
ebbed and flowed, according to both scientists and the lake’s long-time
Aymara inhabitants. Valerio
Rojas […] “In our
Aymara language it is said that: ‘Our mother earth is tired’.” […] “It
is no longer a functional lake. A lake that dries up too often is no
longer functional for fauna, flora and biodiversity,“ Molina told
Reuters. The
drought is also driving away the communities that once lived along its
banks, says Benedicta Uguera, an Indigenous woman from Untavi […]. “The families decided to leave the island, because we cannot survive without water and there is no more life,” she said
[Source: Reporting by Monica Machicao. Writing by Dave Sherwood. Editing by David Holmes. Published at: “Bolivia’s lake Poopo dries up and scientists fear refill unlikely.” Reuters. 3 August 2021.]
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Original post:
A huge lake in Bolivia has almost entirely disappeared.
Lake Poopó used
to be the country’s second largest, after Lake Titicaca [the largest freshwater lake on the South American continent], and just a few
decades ago in its wet season peak it would stretch almost 70km end to
end and cover an area of 3,000 sq km – the size of a small country like Luxembourg.
Today, the lake is largely a flat expanse of salty mud.
What happened? We’ve looked into this in various scientific studies over
the past few years, and the answer is a mix of both climate factors and
more direct human factors such as too much irrigation.
[…]
Lake Poopó, is found at nearly 3,700 meters above sea level in the
“Altiplano”, a large plateau in the centre of the Andes mountains. It is
an endorheic basin:
nothing flows out, and water is lost only through evaporation. Since
dissolved minerals stick around when water is evaporated, the lake is as
salty as the ocean – in some places considerably saltier.
Nonetheless, some decades ago Poopó was home to large communities of
plants and animals and was a source of resources for the region’s
inhabitants. Nowadays, the situation is drastically different. Water
levels have declined over the past two decades, and eventually the lake dried out entirely at the end of 2015 after the extreme weather phenomenon of El Niño.
This was ecological devastation. Many of the lake’s 200 or so animal
species disappeared, including reptiles, mammals, birds – it hosts a
huge community of flamingos – and of course fish. There was also an
exodus of rural people to the nearest big cities.
Worst affected of all
are the Urus-Muratos, an Indigenous community whose entire way of life was based around fishing Lake Poopó.
But during the past few decades, much of the Desaguadero was diverted
for irrigation, so there was less water left to top up the lake. As
Poopó is unusually shallow,
mostly just a few metres deep, relatively small changes in overall
water volume make a big difference to its surface area. Though the lake
has partially recovered due to above-average precipitation in the years
since 2015, the situation is still dire.
[…]
We found the highest increases in water losses took place in the area
around the city of Oruro, which lies to the north of the lake. This is
an area with lots of human activity, urban growth, new highways, and
where river water has been used for mining and agriculture. Bolivia is
the biggest producer of quinoa in the world and the crop increased by
45.5% from 1980 to 2011. As quinoa became more popular around the world
over the past decade, production increased a further 60% in just five years to meet global demand.
Headline, GIF animation, photos, captions, and text published by: Juan Torres-Battio and Belen Marti-Dardona. “Lake Poopo: why Bolivia’s second largest lake disappeared – and how to bring it back.” The Conversation. 11 January 2021.
I feel like this almost buries the lead…there seems to be a pretty direct correlation between the increased worldwide popularity of quinoa and the drying up of this lake
