Episode 1673
El Tatio
Fri, 2021-Dec-03 00:11 UTC
Length - 2:42
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Friday, 3 December 2021 is El Tatio.
El Tatio is a geothermal field with many geysers located in the Andes Mountains of northern Chile at 4,320 metres (14,170 ft) above mean sea level. It is the third-largest geyser field in the world and the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. Various meanings have been proposed for the name "El Tatio", including "oven" or "grandfather". The geothermal field has many geysers, hot springs, and associated sinter deposits. These hot springs eventually form the Rio Salado, a major tributary of the Rio Loa, and are a major source of arsenic pollution in the river. The vents are sites of populations of extremophile microorganisms such as hyperthermophiles, and El Tatio has been studied as an analogue for the early Earth and possible past life on Mars.
El Tatio lies at the western foot of a series of stratovolcanoes, which runs along the border between Chile and Bolivia. This series of volcanoes is part of the Central Volcanic Zone, one of several volcanic belts in the Andes, and of the Altiplano–Puna volcanic complex (APVC). This is a system of large calderas and associated ignimbrites, which have been the sources of supereruptions between 10 and 1 million years ago. Some of these calderas may be the source of heat for the El Tatio geothermal system. There are no recorded historical eruptions at the Tatio volcanoes.
The field is a major tourism destination in northern Chile. It was prospected over the last century for the potential of geothermal power production, but development efforts were discontinued after a major incident in 2009 in which a drilling well blew out, creating a steam column. The blowout caused a political controversy about geothermal power development in Chile.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:11 UTC on Friday, 3 December 2021.
For the full current version of the article, see El Tatio on Wikipedia.
This podcast is produced by Abulsme Productions based on Wikipedia content and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
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This has been Justin Neural. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.
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