A LAKE IN BOLIVIA EVAPORATED The entire area where the lake used to be has become a large desert. Only cracked soil is evidence that there was water once.
M
onitoring Earth’s surface every day, ESA’s Proba-V minisatellite has had a ringside seat as the second largest lake in Bolivia gradually dried up. Lake Poopo has now been declared fully evaporated. Three satellite photos, taken on April 27, 2014, July 20, 2015, and January 22, 2016, have confirmed the vanishing of the lake. Occupying a depression in the Altiplano mountains, the saline Lake Poopo has in the past spanned an area of 3000 square kilometers. But the lake’s shallow nature, with an average depth of just 3 meters, coupled with its arid highland surroundings, means that it is very sensitive to fluctuations in climate. Its official evaporation was declared last December. This is not the first time Lake Poopo has evaporated – the last time was in 1994 – but the fear is that any refilling might take many years, if it occurs at all. The reasons for its disappearance are complex and range from climate effects and bad use of the water resources to human activity, pollution and lack of attention to a disaster that people saw coming many years ago. The government analysis points out that El Niño phenomenon and the global warming MISSIONARY MOVEMENT 16 WORLDWIDE America • Europe • Oceanía • África • Asia
caused by industrialized countries are to blame for this event. Carlos Ortuño, Deputy Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation of Bolivia, quotes scientific facts stating that the minimum temperature has increased by 2.06° centigrade over the last 56 years and that El Niño has been responsible for droughts since October. The catastrophe had being announced years ago, and has had a great environmental, economic, social and political impact. It means the destruction of an entire ecosystem, the loss of hundreds of flora and fauna species, the disappearance of cultures caused by the exodus of communities that used to subsist on the lake, and the lack of effective actions to face the drought. According to experts on conservation, around 200 species of birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, plus a great variety of plants, disappeared along with the drought of Poopo. The Ministry of Environment and Water Resources confirmed the loss of a great quantity of unique species, although the exact number is still unknown; and official count is being considered l (With information of the newspapers El País, La Vanguardia and El Mundo)