Atacama Desert
The driest place on Earth!
By:Victor
Per. 8
The Driest desert, Atacama desert, is in Chile!
The Atacama desert is made of many
land forms
• Lastarria is one of manny many active
volcanos!!!!!!!
• LOTS of sand dunes
and canyons too!
The reason for being so dry…
The reason the Atacama desert is the driest place on earth
is that in some places in the Atacama desert, it hasn’t
rained in over 400 years. The reason being is rainshadow
effect. Rainshadow effect is when air hits the mountain
and rises. At the top of the mountain, the air is too cold to
hold moisture. This causes rain or snow on the same side
of the mountain preventing the moisture to cross over the
mountain to the desert. Oddly enough, as the air goes
down the other side of the mountain, it warms up and
holds what little moisture it has and does not drop it as rain
until it gets cold again. Plus, there is a high pressure zone
over the desert repelling any other possibility of
rain.
The climate of this crazy desert
is DRY, DRY,DRY!
The climate of the Atacama desert is extremely
low in humidity. DRY. The average temperature of the
Atacama desert is from 30 degrees to 0 degrees
Celsius. COLD. The day time temperature is around
22 degrees Celsius and the night time temperature
around 4 degrees to –8 degrees Celsius during
winter(June-August). Though during the summer, it is
30 degrees during the day and 16 degrees Celsius
during the night.
There Are a Few Scattered Mining Towns
and Research Places in the Atacama Desert.
Other than a few small villages Pretty
Much Nothing Else ,Human Wise, Lives
There…
The mining towns are small. The mining towns over
the centuries have mined for copper, silver and other similar
metals .Very few people live in the Atacama desert. With
the population very low, there is hardly any pollution in
the air, which is why there are research facilities in the area.
One of the things that the research facilities observe is
astronomy (the study of stars).
The Few Plants That Live There Are Very
Tough and Use Very Little Water. These Are a
Few. They adapted to the
environment by using tap
roots to collect water
from deep in the ground.
Caiophora andina flower
Copao cactus with a flower
Copiapoa
The Atacama desert animals
The small number of animals that live there
make their homes around the few small salt
lakes from the last rain fall, no matter how
long ago that was.
Lama guanicoe
Puna Flamingo
Works Cited
"EXTREME EARTH." Driest Place .... Atacama Desert, Chile. 2008. commercial . 16 Oct 2008
.
Gerhard, huedepohl. "atacamaphotos." atacamaphotos. 2008. commercial. 16 Oct 2008
.
Kidzworld." Extreme Climates 1:. 2008. commercial. 16 Oct 2008 .
"TURISM ENJOY CHILE LIMITATA." SAN PEDRO DE ATACAMA . 2008. organization. 16 Oct 2008
.
"World atlas.com." Chile: A Brief Description. commercial . 16 Oct 2008
.
Process Questions
• #1 Most important thing learned about extreme climates.
In these most extreme climates the animals, plants and humans adapt to the climate and
make do with what they have.
• #2 The hardest part of this assignment and why.
The hardest part of this assignment was learning to use power point and getting my point
across with the pictures, words and in time.
• #3 What problems did you have?
I learned how to open a file correctly. I also learned just how much information you can lose
if you don’t save right. (its a lot!!)
• #4 How was it helpful to work with others?
If you had a question you could ask your partner instead of waiting.