The Atacama Desert in Chile

By Genevieve S.

I'm here to tell you about the driest place on the earth! This desert is located in Northern Chile between the Andes Mountains and the Coastal Mountains along the Pacific Ocean. It's called the Atacama Desert, it is 600 miles long, and it is the driest place on the planet.

It is the driest because of something called a rain shadow. Warm moist air that rises up the mountainside where it cools and loses water before reaching the desert. This makes the desert really dry because of the mountains on both sides.

The desert has several salt lakes that formed long ago. Now, they are evaporating and concentrating the mineral salts in the water. The Atacama is one of the only places on earth that rain has never touched. Plant life in the desert is supported by marine fog called camanchaca.

One really neat fact is that the soil that is found in the Atacama desert is like soil found on Mars!