Cornell: For Arid, Mars-like Chilean Desert, Rain Brings Death

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Cornell: For Arid, Mars-like Chilean Desert, Rain Brings Death

Post by bystander » Thu Nov 15, 2018 4:14 pm

For Arid, Mars-like Chilean Desert, Rain Brings Death
Cornell University | 2018 Nov 14
When rains fell on the arid Atacama Desert, it was reasonable to expect floral blooms to follow. Instead, the water brought death.

An international team of planetary astrobiologists has found that after encountering never-before-seen rainfall three years ago at the arid core of Chile's Atacama Desert, the heavy precipitation wiped out most of the microbes that had lived there.

“When the rains came to the Atacama, we were hoping for majestic blooms and deserts springing to life. Instead, we learned the contrary, as we found that rain in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert caused a massive extinction of most of the indigenous microbial species there,” said co-author Alberto Fairen ...

Unprecedented rains decimate surface microbial communities in
the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert
~ A. Azua-Bustos et al
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