An innovative field survey of the world's largest salt flat, a New Jersey–size playa high in the Andes, reveals that the barren expanse actually has minuscule, centimeter-scale variations in topography.
People have long known that the world isn’t flat. Now, an innovative field survey of the world’s largest salt flat—a New Jersey–size playa high in the Andes—reveals that the barren expanse unexpectedly has minuscule variations in topography.
The researchers surveyed a 45-by-54-km portion of the playa in September 2002 by crisscrossing its surface in SUVs with Global Positioning System receivers and antennas strapped to their roof racks. Driving back and forth along roughly east-west and north-south paths spaced about 2.25 km apart, the scientists collected GPS data every 100 meters or so, says team member Helen A. Fricker, a geophysicist at Scripps.
Analyzing the survey results, the team detected a broad ridge, highest at its ends, running from southwest to northeast. The playa’s highest and lowest points lay more than 50 km apart, and their difference in elevation measured just 77 centimeters, Fricker says. The team“These findings are pushing the GPS technology to its limits,” says Mauri McSaveney, a geomorphologist with GNS Science in Lower Hutt, New Zealand.
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