South America - You are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes - page 147

Lake Poopó oozes green murk atop the Andean Altiplano, a highland plateau in
Bolivia that's about 12,100 feet above sea level. Large but shallow, Poopó has no
major outlets, so the brown sediment carried in by the Desaguadero and Márquez
rivers stays put and, along with green algae, gives the lake the look of a science ex-
periment gone awry. The indigenous and migratory birds that gather there aren't put
off by the colors, but the lake's shrinkage does threaten their survival: the highlands
are arid to begin with, but climate change has affected both the flow rate of the rivers
that feed Poopó and the lake's own evaporation rate and salinity. Over the past 25
years its surface area has been halved.