Lake Poopó, Bolivia's second largest lake, has vanished

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Proba_Missions/Proba-V_eyes_Bolivia_s_vanishing_lake

by finid • 10 years ago

145 38 10 years ago

pluma• 10 years ago

"There is no such thing as climate change."

Not to argue, but the article does say this isn't the first time the lake has disappeared. Wikipedia also adds that "The time period between 1975 and 1992 is the longest period in recent times with a continuous existence of a water body."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Poop%C3%B3

edit: the article's title is actually, "Proba-V eyes Bolivia’s vanishing lake" which is actually decent in that it seems to be trying to describe that the lake "vanishes" from time-to-time and that Proba-V is showing some views of it.

dghughes• 10 years ago

And at 3,686m about 12000' that wouldn't help evaporation either.

SixSigma• 10 years ago

No one denies that climates change.

sageikosa• 10 years ago

Some of us just reject the idea of natural teleology.

"Climate" is a term of observation for the apparent cyclic and geographical stability of air, water and temperature variations; and has been fluxing through time and across the globe since the Eoarchean due to life, mankind, and other non-linear inputs.

afsina• 10 years ago

For salt lakes it is quite common to dry out sometimes. Besides changing river paths, excessive under ground water use and dams are more likely effecting them rather than global warming.

Shivetya• 10 years ago

Climate change can happen independent of man's actions. The disagreement that separates many is how much effect does man have on climate, can it accurately be measured, and how much effect can man have on it; different from first case.

cherry picking by either side only identifies those who don't want to participate in the discussion

B4CKlash• 10 years ago

"The three 100-m resolution Proba-V images shown here were acquired on 27 April 2014, 20 July 2015 and 22 January 2016 respectively."

"But the lake’s shallow nature, with an average depth of just 3 m, coupled with its arid highland surroundings, means that it is very sensitive to fluctuations in climate."

These quotes leave me wondering; why did they chose to take these images in vastly different times of year?

wavefunction• 10 years ago

It may correspond to availability of the satellite to take the photos of the area.

First the satellite has to be over the area. Second the satellite has to be free from other tasks to take photos of the area. From Wikipedia, the satellite's mission involves:

Proba-V will support applications such as land use, worldwide vegetation classification, crop monitoring, famine prediction, food security, disaster monitoring and biosphere studies.

Taking photos of a single lake in Bolivia may not be high on that list of priorities.

mturmon2• 10 years ago

Interesting speculations, but that's not how these environmental monitoring satellites work. They are set up to get global coverage with this instrument every 5 days. The orbit is chosen so that this happens, to enable long-term time series of vegetation, land cover, etc., as you note.

It's a successor to other satellites like SPOT, and a competitor/complement to NASA satellites like MODIS.

mturmon2• 10 years ago

They appear to have, in essence, two imaging modes. They are showing the higher-resolution-mode, with 100 meter pixels, which are made every 5 days. (They get global coverage every 5 days.) I'll bet there are very few clouds there, so almost all the images (~66 per year) will be OK.

It turns out (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1623/hysj.51.1.98) that the lake is fed by a river which is in turn fed by Lake Titicaca (made famous by Beavis and Butthead). Almost all rain there falls from December to March, so the first two images would be fairly "wet" while the last one (from January) might be rather "dry". Of course, in December 2015, the lake totally dried up.

Besides the climate sensitivity, they also have a water management problem, because the level in the downstream Popoo is controlled somewhat by releases from Titicaca.

One more thing: this set of visual images finds lake extent by measuring the retreat of the shoreline. Another approach is to use radar to find the elevation of water bodies, directly, to high accuracy. That should happen in a couple of years when SWOT launches (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Water_Ocean_Topography...).

this_user• 10 years ago

Same thing happened to the Aral Sea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea

madaxe_again• 10 years ago

I went there (Aralsk, specifically) four years back, while en route to shymkent from aktobe. It's a sad, sad place. Photos don't do it justice - you drive for hours through barren desert, passing next to nothing, and then you reach Aralsk - a nothing harbour city in the middle of nothing, with a tide that went out to never return. Everything is dilapidated, dusty, everyone is old, the smell of diesel mixed with shit and mud is overpowering - the sea looks dry, but under a thin crust is meters of gloopy dumped oil and sewage. Learned that the hard way.

It used to be a bustling place, full of greenery, and the desert around it was green - but the Soviets drained it from the Uzbek side, and whether it can ever be refilled more rapidly than it evaporates is anyone's guess.

Central kaz could have been a place. Instead, it's nothing, and probably will remain such.

Easy to go "oh it's just a lake", but it turns out humans need water.

chadzawistowski• 10 years ago

Interestingly, the Soviets planned to take Siberian rivers that drain "uselessly" into the Arctic sea and divert them southwards towards Kazakhstan and into the Aral sea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal

agentgt• 10 years ago

No the same thing did not happen to the Aral Sea. What happened to the Aral sea was far far worse and far far more of our fault (humans).

xlm1717• 10 years ago

That was far far more the Soviets' fault, not "our" fault.

cjensen3• 10 years ago

You are right. That said, diversion of water for agriculture is also a confounding factor in the case of Lake Poopó.

kedean• 10 years ago

If this happens fairly often (within the last 30 years, according to the article), then how was the lake stocked with fish for local fishermen to have been making a livelihood on in the first place?

glibgil• 10 years ago

Um, the fishermen stocked it. Lakes near any significant human population are stocked or they don't have fish.

DanBC• 10 years ago

Sometimes birds transfer fish eggs from one lake to another. Or fish travel between lakes during flooding.

x3n0ph3n3• 10 years ago

I guess Quantum of Solace wasn't so far-fetched!

zhemao• 10 years ago

Honestly, I thought the villainous plot in Quantum of Solace was a little too realistic. Seizing control of a developing country's water supply? Isn't that a bit too old-hat and run-of-the-mill for the world's greatest criminal organization? Hell, if they were an American or British company, the CIA and MI6 would probably be helping them.

dmoy• 10 years ago

Does this differ significantly from previously generated salt flats in the area? The article didn't seem to address arguably the more famous one in the area, Uyuni. (Which I recall reading up on when I played World of Warcraft and got sidetracked reading about salt flats on Wikipedia for.... too long)

sytelus• 10 years ago

TLDR;

The lake evaporated in span of 2 years. It's a shallow lake only 3m deep and this has happened multiple times, most recently in 1990s. The article looks more like an ad for satellite data exploration.

dfar1• 10 years ago

I was thinking the same thing. Tons of satellite pictures, no in depth information about the actual problem.

dieg0• 10 years ago

Hard to find a problem where there isn't one, it is a thing that happened, that has happened before, in one of the driest regions in the planet.

anigbrowl• 10 years ago

/thread

Thanks!

acomjean• 10 years ago

Nasa's earth observatory has good very high res images/ some analysis of the lake Poopó , with and without water.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=...

they have some images hand shot from the space station too (2005 lower res):

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=6494

"Water levels in Lake Poopó are important because the lake is one of South America’s largest salt-water lakes, making it a prime stop for migratory birds, including flamingoes. "

There has been a drought in the Western US too. Snowpack in sierra nevada.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=85632

I really like the earth observatory.

jpatokal• 10 years ago

It may seem weird, but lakes that come and go are a thing. Here's one in Australia that drained in the 1990s and is now making a comeback:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_George_(New_South_Wales)

Lake Poopó, Bolivia's second largest lake, has vanished

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