干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

The northern part of Chile has a very arid environment, due to the Humboldt cold current and to a particular meteorological situation in the Tropics.

In the Cordillera de la Sal, a small horst parallel to the Andes, one observes obvious karstic features in the evaporite deposits (halite), both on a large and a small scale. They were developed in an environment which does not look favourable for such phenomena. Their present evolution is very slow, and they were probably formed during a much more humid period.