Pre-Columbian populations that inhabited the Tarapacá mid river valley in the Atacama Desert in Chile during the Middle Horizon and Late Intermediate Period (AD 500-1450) show patterns of chronic poisoning due to exposure to geogenic arsenic. Exposure of these people to arsenic was assessed using synchrotron-based elemental X-ray fluorescence mapping, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, X-ray diffra...

This study reports data on arsenic speciation in two green algae species (Cladophora sp. and Chara sp.) and in five aquatic plants (Azolla sp., Myriophyllum aquaticum, Phylloscirpus cf. desserticola, Potamogeton pectinatus, Ruppia filifolia and Zannichellia palustris) from the Loa River Basin in the Atacama Desert (northern Chile). Arsenic content was measured by Mass spectrometry coupled with ...

We present a baseline plan of Japanese receiver developments for the Large Millimeter Submillimeter Array (LMSA) and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). Two receiver cartridge layouts for ALMA band 8 (385 – 500 GHz) have been proposed based on a quasi-optical sideband separation. These cartridges will be evaluated in a secondary focal receiver system with the Atacama Submillimeter Telesc...

[1] In most climates on Earth, biological processes control soil N. In the Atacama Desert of Chile, aridity severely limits biology, and soils accumulate atmospheric NO3 . We examined this apparent transformation of the soil N cycle using a series of ancient Atacama Desert soils (>2 My) that vary in rainfall (21 to <2 mm yr ). With decreasing rainfall, soil organic C decreases to 0.3 kg C m 2 a...

S urface solar radiation is a major component of the surface heat budget. Diurnally and seasonally averaged over the entire Earth, 188 ± 7 W m–2 reach the surface to be either absorbed (~165 ± 6 W m–2) or reflected back to the atmosphere (Trenberth et al. 2009; Stephens et al. 2012). Changes in the amount of solar radiation received at the surface are intrinsically tied to the total amount of p...