El Niño rains have transformed Chile’s Atacama Desert into a spectacular sea of color, awakening a fleeting ecosystem of flowers and wildlife in one of the driest places on Earth.
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ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
One of the driest places on Earth has burst into color. Nearly 7,000 square miles of Chile’s Atacama Desert are carpeted in wildflowers after rainfall transformed the barren landscape. Scientists say such spectacular blooms could become more frequent as climate change brings increasingly unpredictable weather to the region. John Bartlett reports.
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JOHN BARTLETT, BYLINE: Where once there was little more than rock, sand and dust, the landscape is now alive with color. Every few years, winter rains awaken dormant bulbs and seeds across Chile’s Atacama Desert, the driest nonpolar desert on Earth, bringing an explosion of color to its otherwise stark landscape. And this year, Chile’s National Forest Corporation says that the desert is experiencing its most spectacular flowering in almost 30 years.
All around me here are islands of color, trumpet-like yellow flowers on long stems, purple saucers which pop against the gray sand, and star-shaped sprays of flame-orange petals.
This winter, heavy rains associated with the El Niño cycle triggered flash floods in the Atacama Desert.
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BARTLETT: The blooms stretch across Llanos de Challe National Park, a 113,000-acre reserve along Chile’s arid coastline, where white sand beaches meet the Pacific Ocean. Moises Grimberg is the park’s administrator.
MOISES GRIMBERG: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: “This year, we have had unbelievable winter rains – more than 150 millimeters – something we haven’t seen since 1997,” he says.
There are more than 200 species of flower, some lying dormant beneath the sun for decades, waiting for rain.
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BARTLETT: Grimberg says that the park usually attracts around 10,000 visitors a year. But the spectacular blooms have brought in 15,000 in just a few weeks.
GRIMBERG: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: “But for us, the beauty is in the whole cycle, not just the visible part, which is the bloom,” Grimberg tells me.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: Across the desert, scientists are racing to record the extraordinary diversity of life emerging from the Earth before the brief, flowering season comes to an end.
On this hillside, there are beetles scurrying around my feet in the sand and the wind is singing through the flowers. A whole transient ecosystem forms around the desert bloom.
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BARTLETT: Biologists from Chile’s National Seed Bank are collecting specimens to analyze at their laboratory.
BRITT WALLBERG: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: “It’s so important to collect all of this genetic diversity,” explains Britt Wallberg, as we step carefully between colorful patches of flowers. Protecting genetic diversity means protecting the different characteristics that species need to survive in different environments.
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BARTLETT: A national park was established in 2023 to protect the 141,000 acres of desert where the flowers return every few years. But local authorities want to go further.
MIGUEL VARGAS: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: Miguel Vargas is the governor of the Atacama region.
VARGAS: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: “Getting UNESCO recognition for this phenomenon will give us the responsibility to look after it, too,” he says. Ultimately, Vargas hopes to secure government backing for the UNESCO bid, which could make this Chile’s eighth World Heritage Site.
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BARTLETT: This extraordinary, vibrant phenomenon is fleeting. It will only last a few more weeks. And in the months ahead, once scientists have analyzed the data, we’ll know whether this was indeed the most extensive flowering in almost 30 years and, tantalizingly, whether they’ve discovered any plant species not previously recorded in the region. For NPR News, I’m John Bartlett in Copiapó, Chile.
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