For the first time in a decade, plants in Atacama Desert have begun to bloom in mid-winter, blanketing some of the driest desert on the planet in shades of white and purple.
The rare bloom is the result of rain in northern Chile during the Southern Hemisphere fall. About 0.4 inches (11 millimeters) fell in mid-April, which combined with morning fog known locally as “camanchaca” to activate vegetation that can lie dormant for up to 15 years.
Two of the first species to color the landscape this year were “pata de guanaco” (Cistanthe grandiflora), with its bright fuchsia flowers and white “field sighs” (Nolana baccata).
The bloom occurred in an area covering between 115 and 155 square miles (300 to 400 square kilometers), said César Pizarro, head of the biodiversity conservation and scientific research section at the National Forestry Corporation (Conaf) in Atacama. A flowering desert, which occurs in the spring (September to October) due to winter rains, can span about 5,800 square miles (15,000 km2), with more than 200 species in bloom.
Typically, desert flowers bloom in the spring in years when at least 0.6 inches (15 mm) of rain falls between June, July, and August. This is related to El Niño phenomenon — which boosts Chile’s above-average rainfall.
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In 2015, the rains fell in March, activating the vegetation in winter, as is happening now.
That year it also rained in July and August, causing the desert to burst with flowers in the spring.
But it is unclear whether the same will happen this time. of The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecast shows current ENSO-neutral conditions – a period when no El Nino or La Niña is happening – likely to continue for another month before transitioning to La Niña. This means that the drought will return and the Atacama desert will not have enough moisture to reactivate vegetation during the cycle.
If there is rain in the coming weeks, atmospheric humidity would be higher than normal, potentially causing a blooming desert in September. However, this is not foreseen.
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Otherwise, if La Niña happens soon, the flowers blooming this winter are probably the last to be seen this decade (due to the El Niño, La Niña cycles) and there won’t be a big bloom next spring, Francisco Squeo, president of the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB) and researcher in the Department of Biology at the University of La Serena, told Live Science.
The Atacama Desert’s rare winter bloom is not without problems. The main one, according to María Fernanda Pérez, associate professor of ecology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, is that pollinators don’t arrive as quickly as plants respond to rain. “If the seeds germinate and flower, but the pollinators don’t get there, the seeds die,” she told Live Science.
This is likely to happen now, as there are currently no bees, moths, beetles or other pollinators present due to the low temperatures, according to Pizarro. Only mites and some reptiles, birds and mammals were seen.
Herbaceous plants—like those that thrive in the Atacama Desert—have a self-pollination mechanism that is activated if a pollinator does not arrive in a given year. But this reserve occurs late in flowering.
A big scientific unknown is what happens if this disconnect between flowering and pollinators caused by anomalous events persists over time, since no seeds would be added to the dormant pool for future reactivation.
“This very dry land harbors a treasure. [A] the seed bank that has been resilient,” she said.
As the climate changes, anomalous events like this year’s winter bloom may become more frequent, potentially meaning annuals don’t reproduce. The flowering desert would be left with only bulbous plants, drastically reducing its diversity, or leaving room for invasive species, Pizarro said.
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