Qualla: Laguna Colorada

Laguna Colorada: Introduction

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0. The water is red. Not rust-tinged, not faintly pink in certain light, but a deep, vivid crimson that shifts across the spectrum depending on the hour -- soft rose at dawn, blood-dark under midday sun, fading to coral as afternoon clouds roll across the altiplano. Laguna Colorada sits at 4,278 meters above sea level in the remote southwestern corner of Bolivia, a shallow hypersaline lake whose color comes not from the sky above but from the biology and geology below: red sediments on the lakebed and vast colonies of Dunaliella salina, a pigmented alga that thrives in water too salty for almost anything else.

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Image: kallerna | CC BY-SA 4.0

Laguna Colorada: Painted by Algae

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DanielGuzmanDuchen, CC BY-SA 4.0. The mechanism behind Laguna Colorada's color is elegantly simple. Dunaliella salina, a single-celled alga adapted to extreme salinity, produces beta-carotene as a protective pigment against intense UV radiation at high altitude. When conditions favor algal growth -- warmer temper...

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Image: DanielGuzmanDuchen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Laguna Colorada: Flamingo Nursery

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pedro Szekely from Los Angeles, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. Three species of flamingo breed at Laguna Colorada: the James's flamingo, the Andean flamingo, and the Chilean flamingo. The James's is the most abundant, its population drawn to the lake's rich plankton -- the same microscopic life that tints the water also feeds the birds and c...

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Image: Pedro Szekely from Los Angeles, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Laguna Colorada: Ramsar and the Expanding Boundary

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Owen Prior from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1990, Laguna Colorada was designated a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention, initially covering just over 500 square kilometers. On July 13, 2009, the protected area was dramatically expanded to 14,277 square kilometers -- an area larger than the nat...

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Image: Owen Prior from Vancouver, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

Laguna Colorada: Chemistry of the Impossible

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DanielGuzmanDuchen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Laguna Colorada's water chemistry reads like a list of conditions that should preclude life. Hypersaline, with high concentrations of arsenic, selenium, and mercury, the lake exists in a state of chemical extremity that scientists have studied for decades. Recent research has exa...

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Image: DanielGuzmanDuchen | CC BY-SA 4.0