
Lake Poopó, Bolivia's second largest lake, has vanished - finid
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Proba_Missions/Proba-V_eyes_Bolivia_s_vanishing_lake
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B4CKlash
"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
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.

~~~
mturmon
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.

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this_user
Same thing happened to the Aral Sea:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea)

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

~~~
cjensen
And the US eliminated the largest freshwater lake West of the Mississippi [1].

[1] (largest by area)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake)

~~~
JBReefer
A. Whataboutism is lame B. The Aral Sea was 10x larger [1] C. I do appreciate
the irony of A D. the scale of both is mindblowing, so I upvoted you

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea)

~~~
cjensen
Sorry: I meant that as a response to the notion that the Soviets made a unique
error with the Aral (hence the "don't blame us" stated in the parent) rather
than being a common symptom of water diversion worldwide. It was not meant as
to be a whataboutism, which is an awesome word for bad moral equivalence. I am
so stealing that.

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

~~~
dieg0
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.

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acomjean
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=...](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=87363)

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

[http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=6494](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](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=85632)

I really like the earth observatory.

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

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dmoy
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)

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kedean
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?

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

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

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x3n0ph3n3
I guess Quantum of Solace wasn't so far-fetched!

~~~
zhemao
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.

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pluma
"There is no such thing as climate change."

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

