Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

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Occupying over 10 000 sq km, the vast Salar de Uyuni lies at the southern end of the Altiplano, a high plain of inland drainage in the central Andes. Some 40,000 years ago, this area was part of a giant prehistoric lake that dried out, leaving behind the salt flat.

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The geometric shapes in the upper left are large evaporation ponds of the national lithium plant, where lithium bicarbonate is isolated from salt brine.

The surrounding terrain is rough in comparison to the vast salt flat. In the lower right we can see the 20 km-wide alluvial fan of the Rio Grande de Lípez delta.

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On the whole, the Salar de Uyuni is very flat, with a surface elevation variation of less than 1 m. This makes the ideal area for calibrating satellite radar altimeters – a kind of radar instrument that measures surface topography.

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Photo taken in

May 17, 2017

Copernicus Sentinel 2-B