The intersection of climate, tectonic uplift, and regional groundwater flow in the central Andean Plateau: Insight from the accumulation of the massive evaporite deposit in the Salar de Atacama, Chile

Abstract:

The Salar de Atacama (SdA), a large endorheic basin adjacent to the Central Andes in the hyperarid Atacama Desert, has accumulated over 1800 km³ of evaporites and a lithium-rich brine since the late Miocene. Focused groundwater discharge in endorheic basins, such as those in the Chilean Altiplano, provide opportunities to investigate mechanisms for closing hydrologic budgets in arid regions. We demonstrate that modern evapotranspiration is 5 to 21 times greater than modern recharge from precipitation in the topographic watershed. Multiple lines of evidence including an adapted chloride mass balance method applied to remotely sensed precipitation estimates and sodium mass balance calculations support this conclusion. We contend that the missing water needed to close the extreme hydrologic imbalance of SdA is sourced from recharge on the orogenic plateau in an area over 4 times larger than the topographic watershed, augmented by transient draining of stored groundwater. Groundwater recharged during wetter periods in the late Pleistocene is still actively draining and discharging from storage without corresponding recharge into the system. Geologic evidence from the volume of evaporites deposited in the basin suggests that the SdA has been receiving significant amounts of fresh inflow waters over at least 7 Ma despite the region being hyperarid over the same time frame. Our conceptualization of the depositional model for evaporite accumulation necessitates the water table being at or close to the land surface. Subsidence associated with basin development has accommodated significant accumulation of these deposits thereby requiring the sustenance of fresh inflow waters during uplift of the Andean plateau. Sustained groundwater discharge to the basin requires long residence times, deep water tables and strong gradients in landscape and climate enabled by an uplifting plateau. The application of steady state assumptions to the modern hydrologic system are unsupported by observations and difficult to justify in this geologic setting with extremely low recharge rates and high topographic relief. These results have implications for lake-level based paleoclimatic reconstructions on the Altiplano-Puna plateau and conceptualizations of watershed boundaries near plateau margins.