Glacial Lake Vanishes in Southern Chile
Pastor Dale Morgan
Jun 21, 4:22 AM EDT
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Glacial Lake Vanishes in Southern Chile*
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- A five-acre glacial lake in Chile's southern
Andes has disappeared - and scientists want to know why.
Park rangers at Bernardo O'Higgins National Park said they found a
100-feet-deep crater in late May were the lake had been in March.
Several large pieces of ice that used to float atop the water also were
spotted.
"The lake had simply disappeared," Juan Jose Romero, head of Chile's
National Forest Service in the southernmost region of Magallanes, said
Wednesday. "No one knows what happened."
A group of geologists and other experts will be sent to the area 1,250
miles southeast of Santiago in the next few days to investigate, Romero
said.
One theory is the water disappeared through cracks in the lake bottom
into underground fissures. But experts do not know why the cracks would
have appeared because there have been no earthquakes reported in the
area recently, Romero said.
A river that flowed out of the lake was reduced to a trickle.