The Atacama Desert of Chile offers a window into how the surface of rocky planets evolve in the near absence of water. In my talk I am going to discuss how the lack of water influences physical and chemical weathering processes, a perspective that helps in understanding surface landforms and soil mineralogy on other waterless and lifeless (?) worlds like Mars. The big surprise for me about the Atacama has been the fundamental role of seismicity, something that took me years to recognize because of my origins in an aqueous world. We will look at some of the features of this seismic landscape, including the truly bizarre rolling and rubbing boulder fields.
Chemical weathering patterns are also rather “extraterrestrial” in the Atacama, and our studies explain why sulfates are abundant and carbonates negligible in the Atacama and on Mars. Because of its aridity and lack of life, the Atacama missed out on the Great Carbonation Event (GCE) that overtook Earth starting in the early (oceans) to mid- (land) Paleozoic.