Atacama Desert

Coordinates: 24°30′S 69°15′W / 24.500°S 69.250°W / -24.500; -69.250

The Atacama Desert (Spanish: Desierto de Atacama) is a plateau in South America, covering a 1,000-kilometre (600 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes mountains. It is the driest non-polar desert in the world. According to estimates the Atacama Desert proper occupies 105,000 square kilometres (41,000 sq mi), or 128,000 square kilometres (49,000 sq mi) if the barren lower slopes of the Andes are included. Most of the desert is composed of stony terrain, salt lakes (salares), sand, and felsic lava that flows towards the Andes.

Setting

The World Wide Fund for Nature defines the Atacama Desert ecoregion as extending from a few kilometers south of the Peru–Chile border to about 30° south latitude. The National Geographic Society considers the coastal area of southern Peru to be part of the Atacama Desert and also includes the deserts south of the Ica Region in Peru.

Peru borders it on the north and the Chilean Matorral ecoregion borders it on the south. To the east lies the less arid Central Andean dry puna ecoregion. The drier portion of this ecoregion is located south of the Loa River between the parallel Sierra Vicuña Mackenna and Cordillera Domeyko. To the north of the Loa lies the Pampa del Tamarugal.

Atacama (disambiguation)

The Atacama Desert is the most arid desert in the world which is located in Chile.

Atacama may refer to:

People

Places

Geological formations

Other

Atacama Region

The Atacama Region (Spanish: III Región de Atacama) is one of Chile's 15 first order administrative divisions. It comprises three provinces, Chañaral, Copiapó and Huasco. It is bordered to the north by Antofagasta, to the south by Coquimbo, to east with Provinces of Catamarca, La Rioja and San Juan of Argentina, and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. The regional capital Copiapó is located at 806 km (501 mi) north of the country's capital of Santiago. The region occupy the southern portion of Atacama Desert, the rest of the desert is mainly distributed among the other regions of Norte Grande

Demography

The Atacama Region is the third least populated region of the country, after Aysen and Magallanes. Of its total population, over 50% are located in the cities of Copiapó and Vallenar.

The largest cities are (2002 census data) Copiapó (125,983 inhabitants), Vallenar (43,750), Caldera (12,776), Chañaral (12,086), El Salvador (8,697) Tierra Amarilla (8,578), and Diego de Almagro (7,951).