“Patagonian blues” by Agathe Lisé-Pronovost, distributed by the European Geosciences Union under a Creative Commons license.
If you are feeling the Monday blues, this peaceful photograph of a Patagonian lake might be just what you need to light up your day. Patagonia is known for its rich volcanic history and dramatic landscapes, and this scene is no exception. It shows a lake in the Pali-Aike volcanic field on the Argentina-Chile border, located north of the Strait of Magellan: the beautiful Laguna Potrok Aike.
Agathe Lisé-Pronovost was lucky enough to visit the site in the Austral spring of 2008. “As part of my PhD, I was participating in the scientific drilling operations of PASADO, the Potrok Aike maar lake sediment archive drilling project in the framework of ICDP, the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program,” she says.
Potrok Aike is a maar lake, a water-filled volcanic crater that originated from an eruption in which groundwater came into contact with hot lava or magma. “It has a maximum diameter of 3.5 km and, at 200 metres depth, is the deepest crater of the Pali Aike volcanic field,” Agathe explains.
“It is a key site for paleoenvironmental studies because the sediments accumulate rapidly and it is located at 52 degrees of latitude south, on one of the only landmasses in the path of the strong Southern Hemisphere westerly winds.” Being highly susceptible to paleoclimatic changes, the lake is important in understanding the natural phenomena that cause climatic variability.
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