Scientists Try to Solve Mystery of Vanished Lake in Chile

A glacial lake on the southern tip of Chile has vanished, leaving behind a dry crater and a scientific mystery.

Park rangers in Magallanes province, a remote wilderness 1,200 miles south of Santiago, were stunned to discover that the lake no longer existed. When last seen three months ago it had a surface area of 101,200 square meters (332,000 square feet) and was filled with icy water 30 meters (100ft) deep.

"In March we patrolled the area and everything was normal. We went again in May and to our surprise we found the lake had completely disappeared," Juan José Romero, regional director of Chile's National Forestry Corporation, said this week. "The only things left were chunks of ice on the dry lake-bed and an enormous fissure. We are not talking about a small lake, it's quite big. No one knows what happened."

A 40-meter wide river that flowed from the lake to the Pacific Ocean five miles away has been reduced to a trickle and can now be walked over.

For once, however, the prime suspect is not global warming or any other form of climate change. A team of geologists and other scientists due to fly to the site over the next few days has speculated that an earthquake cracked the earth beneath the lake and drained the water, as if a plug had been pulled.

Ricardo Jana, a researcher with the Chilean Antarctic Institute, told the newspaper El Mercurio that if a tremor caused the collapse then the scientists should be able to pinpoint how it happened.

Southern Chile has recorded thousands of minor tremors this year. A relatively big one in April is suspected of pulling the plug on the lake, but the scientists stressed that was conjecture.

The lake, which had been fed mostly by water from melting glaciers, was so remote it had not been named and had been omitted from some maps. The park rangers who noticed its disappearance did so by chance. They had been on a patrol to monitor huemules, a type of deer.

Magallanes province is often referred to as the end of the world since it is one of the most southernmost points inhabited by humans.

Despite the Magallanes mystery, climate change is more of a threat to South America's glacier lakes. Higher temperatures have forced the retreat, and in some cases disappearance, of lakes in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru.