Lake Ballivián is an ancient lake in the

Altiplano The Altiplano (Spanish for "high plain"), Collao (Quechua and Aymara: Qullaw, meaning "place of the Qulla") or Andean Plateau, in west-central South America, is the most extensive high plateau on Earth outside Tibet. The plateau is located at the ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

and is named after the

Bolivian Bolivian may refer to: * Something of, or related to Bolivia ** Bolivian people ** Demographics of Bolivia ** Culture of Bolivia * SS ''Bolivian'', a British-built standard cargo ship A cargo ship or freighter is a merchant ship that carries ...

scholar Don Manuel Vicente Ballivian. It is part of a series of lakes which developed in the Titicaca basin along with Lake Mataro and Lake Cabana, reaching an altitude of . Lake Ballivián itself is of late Quaternary age and may have influenced the spread and development of animals in the Altiplano. In the southern Altiplano, Lake Escara may be coeval with Lake Ballivián.

Context

The Altiplano in South America is a high plateau between the Eastern Cordillera and the Western Cordillera with an average altitude of and a surface area of . A number of evaporation landforms can be found in the Altiplano, including Salar de Uyuni and Salar de Coipasa. In the northern Altiplano lies

Lake Titicaca Lake Titicaca (; es, Lago Titicaca ; qu, Titiqaqa Qucha) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. By volume of water and by surface area, i ...

. While the present-day Altiplano has an arid-semiarid climate, it was formerly occupied by large lakes that grew and dried out in many phases. Of these lakes, Lake Ballivián and Lake Minchin were among the first to be described. Lake Mataro and Lake Cabana were later described in 1984 as previous ancient lakes in the Titicaca basin prior to Lake Ballivián. The name ''Ballivián'' was coined in 1909, it refers to the Bolivian scholar Don Manuel Vicente Ballivian. Sometimes that name is used to simply refer to precursor lakes of Titicaca.

Lake

Lake Ballivián reached an altitude of . Another terrace at a height of may correspond to a lake level drop of Ballivián or to a prolonged standstill. An erosion surface at elevation and associated

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

s were formerly attributed to Lake Ballivián but today shorelines at that elevation are associated with Lake Cabana which predates

glaciation A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate be ...

. The water surface would have covered , about one and a half as large as present day Lake Titicaca, and extended farther south than the present-day Lake Titicaca while its eastern and western margins largely coincided with the present-day margins of Lake Titicaca. In some places,

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Arc ...

es,

gulf A gulf is a large inlet from the ocean into the landmass, typically with a narrower opening than a bay, but that is not observable in all geographic areas so named. The term gulf was traditionally used for large highly-indented navigable bodies ...

s and

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

s such as the present-day Copacabana Peninsula formed. It is documented from the Lake Titicaca basin, where it forms lacustrine abrasion surfaces and deposits of clay and sand at a height of above the lake level. The Azangaro

Formation Formation may refer to: Linguistics * Back-formation, the process of creating a new lexeme by removing or affixes * Word formation, the creation of a new word by adding affixes Mathematics and science * Cave formation or speleothem, a secondar ...

in Peru and Ulloma Formation in Bolivia are deposits of Lake Ballivián, as are clays around Lake Titicaca. Remains of the lake are found on the western and southern sides of the lake basin. An old theory envisaged that Lake Ballivián or some other precursor of Lake Titicaca originally was a northwestern prolongation of the Rio La Paz valley before gravelly deposits dammed it, or of a

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

-draining valley which was blocked by

volcanic A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...

activity. Lake Ballivián is of late Quaternary age, it may have formed between 600,000 - 500,000 years ago. Such a dating is supported by fossils found in sediments left by the lake. The existence of Lake Ballivián in the Titicaca basin may coincide with the existence of Lake Escara, and preceded the existence of Lake Minchin. The water levels of Escara were much lower than these of Ballivián, indicating that the Ulloma-Capalla sill did exist at that time. It is possible that waters from Lake Ballivián broke through at

Calacoto Calacoto (hispanicized spelling) or Qalaqutu (Aymara ''qala'' stone, ''qutu'' pile, heap,katari.org
Aymara-Spanish di ...

into the Rio Mauri valley, rapidly cutting down a new valley and draining the lake. The formation of the Rio Desaguadero outlet may have stabilized future lake levels. A tectonic event shortly before the formation of the lake formed a trough which is now the location of Lake Titicaca. The interglacial Sorata-Choqueyapu I may be contemporaneous to Lake Ballivián, as would be the

Saale glaciation The Saale glaciation or Saale Glaciation, sometimes referred to as the Saalian glaciation, Saale cold period (german: Saale-Kaltzeit), Saale complex (''Saale-Komplex'') or Saale glacial stage (''Saale-Glazial'', colloquially also the ''Saale-Eiszei ...

in Europe and the

Illinoian glaciation The Illinoian Stage is the name used by Quaternary geologists in North America to designate the period c.191,000 to c.130,000 years ago, during the middle Pleistocene, when sediments comprising the Illinoian Glacial Lobe were deposited. It preced ...

in North America. During the Lake Ballivián episode,

pupfish Pupfish are a group of small killifish belonging to ten genera of the family Cyprinodontidae of ray-finned fish. Pupfish are especially noted for being found in extreme and isolated situations. They are primarily found in North America, South Am ...

colonized the southern and central Altiplano. The diversification of '' Heleobia'' and '' Hyalella''

crustaceans Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean gro ...

, '' Orestias'' fish as well as the speciation of ''

Biomphalaria ''Biomphalaria'' is a genus of air-breathing freshwater snails, aquatic pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the family Planorbidae, the ram's horn snails and their allies.MolluscaBase (2018). Biomphalaria Preston, 1910. Accessed through: World Regi ...

'' snails may have also been influenced by the development of Lake Ballivián. The

sponge Sponges, the members of the phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), are a basal animal clade as a sister of the diploblasts. They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate throug ...

'' Balliviaspongia'' is named after Lake Ballivián.

References

Sources

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External links

Results of an Expedition to the Central Andes
contains images of lake deposits. Former lakes of South America Geology of Bolivia {{coord missing, Bolivia, Peru