Laguna de Aculeo is since 2018 a dried-out

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

located in the city of

Paine Paine may refer to: Geography *Paine, Chile *Paine College, a defunct Historically Black college in Augusta, Georgia *Paine Field, an airport in Everett, Washington, United States *Paine Lake, a lake in Minnesota *Paine River, a waterstream locate ...

Maipo Province Maipo Province ( es, Provincia de Maipo) is one of six provinces in the Santiago Metropolitan Region of central Chile. Its capital is San Bernardo. Administration As a province, Maipo is a second-level administrative division of Chile, governed b ...

Santiago Metropolitan Region Santiago Metropolitan Region ( es, link=no, Región Metropolitana de Santiago) is one of Chile's 16 first-order administrative divisions. It is the country's only landlocked administrative region and contains the nation's capital, Santiago. Mos ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

. It featured muddy banks and is surrounded by gently tilting ground. The lake's bottom is largely impermeable limiting its connection to underground

aquifer An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing, permeable rock, rock fractures, or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, or silt). Groundwater from aquifers can be extracted using a water well. Aquifers vary greatly in their characterist ...

s. It classifies as a

sediment Sediment is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of wind, water, or ice or by the force of gravity acting on the particles. For example, sand an ...

-dammed lake. The drying of lake is the result of below-average rainfall over the past decade and also because of human activity which are diverting rivers and pumping

groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidate ...

from

s, which both had replenished the lake.

History

The lake obtained its name from the

Mapuche The Mapuche ( (Mapuche & Spanish: )) are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who sha ...

term ''Acum-Leu'', meaning "where the river ends". Local folklore tells of a treasure, an

entierro In Chilean folklore the entierros (lit. "burrowing") are legendary treasures buried in different locations by different motives. The identity of the alleged burrowers vary from case to case, sometimes being indigenous peoples, pirates and privatee ...

, that is hidden in the mud of the bottom of the lake since 1814. Once a main tourist destination for individuals in Santiago, the lake featured a popular floating bar in the 1990s. According to García-Chevesich, who co-authored a research paper about the lake, stated that the population growth, the purchase of water rights and drought resulted with the drying of the lake. In 2010, plantations and large estates purchased the water rights–water is recognized as private property in Chile following the

Augusto Pinochet Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (, , , ; 25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being declared President of ...

dictatorship–of tributaries feeding the lake and rerouted them for their own usage. The average annual rainfall in the region dropped from 350 mm/y in the 1980s to less than half that in the 2010s. In 2011 the lagoon was 12 km² in size and 6 metres in depth.''Populär sjö borta i Chile – bara öken kvar''
Aftonbladet, 23 March 2019 (Swedish) It disappeared entirely on May 9, 2018. Probable causes include a large influx of tourists, as well as using its waters for avocado cultivation, as well as increased water use by the nearby city of

and a longterm drought period since 2010, which is partially due to

global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

.''Satellitenbild der Woche - Verdammt, hier war doch mal ein See!''
Spiegel Online, 22 April 2019 (German)

Reclamation

Reclamation projects are promoted to identify solutions for long-term recovery, especially voluntary watershed management agreements that will allow the rational and sustainable use of this resource. Since the lake derives much of its inflow from surface streams the need to keep or grow healthy forest cover in its watershed to act as a humidity storage has been deemed important for the lake's recovery. An eventual recovery of a permanent water surface would require various years of precipitation surplus.

References

External links

''La laguna Aculeo, antes atractivo de Chile, seca por completo''
(video, Spanish) *Lucas Cifuentes, Nicole Kramm
''Chile se va secando: Aculeo está muerto''
eldesconcierto.cl, 18. Februar 2019 (Spanish) *Philipp Reeves
''In Chile, Many Regard Climate Change As The Greatest External Threat''
NPR, 16. Juli 2017 (audio, 7:42 mins) Lagoons of Chile Landforms of Santiago Metropolitan Region Former bodies of water {{Santiago-geo-stub

History

Reclamation

See also

References

External links