About the High Lakes 2007 Expedition

Since 2003, the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) has supported the investigation of high-altitude lakes (4,300 to ³ 6,000 m) in the Bolivian and Chilean Andes. Their physical environment combined with the changing climate in the Andes and the rapid loss of aqueous habitat provide parallels to ancient martian lakes at the Noachian/Hesperian transition. Documenting this analogy is one of the focuses of the High-Lakes Project (HLP). Another is to characterize extreme terrestrial aqueous habitats to broaden our knowledge of Earth's biosphere, and in the process, accumulate and archive information on threatened and often poorly known ecosystems before they disappear. The lakes investigated by HLP as of 2007 are: Licancabur (5,916 m), Aguas Calientes (5,870 m), Poquentica (5,850 m), Escalante (5,700 m) and other lower lakes and ponds, such as Laguna Blanca and Laguna Verde (4,340 m). They unraveled unique, diverse and surprisingly abundant ecosystems, which survival and adaptation strategies were documented. The project conducts detailed field investigations of each of these lakes, characterizing their geophysical, limnological, and biological environment.