Qualla: Laguna Lejia

Laguna Lejia: Introduction

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RudiR at German Wikipedia(Original text: Rudolf Reiser, Miesbach), CC BY-SA 3.0. Scientists looking for Mars came to the Atacama. Specifically, they came to Laguna Lejia, a shallow salt lake perched at 4,325 meters in the Puna de Atacama, surrounded by volcanoes and stripped by wind to a present-day surface of just 1.9 square kilometers. What drew the astrobiologists was not the lake's size but its story: during the last ice age, Lejia swelled to 10 square kilometers and filled with freshwater, building stromatolites and bioherms along its shores. Then the climate shifted, the water shrank, and the microbial ecosystems adapted or died. The parallels to ancient Martian lakes — particularly Jezero crater, where NASA's Perseverance rover hunts for signs of past life — are close enough that researchers have used Lejia as a terrestrial analog for understanding what habitable environments look like as they dry up and vanish.

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Image: RudiR at German Wikipedia(Original text: Rudolf Reiser, Miesbach) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Laguna Lejia: Ringed by Fire

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chile_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Laguna Lejia sits in a tectonic depression within a 193-square-kilometer catchment, encircled by volcanoes that have shaped and reshaped the landscape for millennia. Lascar, one of Chile's most active volcanoes, looms to the north — its 1993 eruption sent ash and pyroclastic mate...

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Image: Chile_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Laguna Lejia: When the Lake Was an Inland Sea

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RudiR at German Wikipedia(Original text: Rudolf Reiser, Miesbach), CC BY-SA 3.0. During glacial periods, decreased evaporation and increased precipitation transformed Lejia from a shallow salt puddle into a freshwater lake five times its current size. Water levels rose roughly 25 meters above their present mark, and bioherms — mound-like structures built by m...

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Image: RudiR at German Wikipedia(Original text: Rudolf Reiser, Miesbach) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Laguna Lejia: Life at the Edge of Possibility

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RudiR at German Wikipedia(Original text: Rudolf Reiser, Miesbach), CC BY-SA 3.0. Despite average temperatures hovering around 2 degrees Celsius and precipitation of just 200 millimeters per year — most of it during the summer months and far below the annual evaporation rate — Laguna Lejia supports a community of organisms adapted to extremes. Diatoms colonize...

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Image: RudiR at German Wikipedia(Original text: Rudolf Reiser, Miesbach) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Laguna Lejia: Hunters on the High Terrace

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RudiR at German Wikipedia(Original text: Rudolf Reiser, Miesbach), CC BY-SA 3.0. Archaeological artifacts from the archaic period have been found on an upper terrace of Laguna Lejia, evidence that ancient hunters traveled to this altitude despite its punishing conditions. The lake, even in its diminished state, would have attracted game animals to its shores,...

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Image: RudiR at German Wikipedia(Original text: Rudolf Reiser, Miesbach) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Laguna Lejia: A Mirror in the High Desert

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RudiR at German Wikipedia(Original text: Rudolf Reiser, Miesbach), CC BY-SA 3.0. From the air, Laguna Lejia appears as a small, reflective patch surrounded by the muted tones of the high Atacama — tan volcanic slopes, dark lava flows, and the pale mineral deposits left by vanished shorelines. The lake's salinity creates zones of different color and opacity, a...

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Image: RudiR at German Wikipedia(Original text: Rudolf Reiser, Miesbach) | CC BY-SA 3.0