Regional groundwater flow and accumulation of a massive evaporite deposit at the margin of the Chilean Altiplano

Focused groundwater discharge in closed basins provides opportunities to investigate mechanisms for closing hydrologic and solute budgets in arid regions. The Salar de Atacama (SdA), adjacent to the Central Andean Plateau in the hyperarid Atacama Desert, provides an extreme example of halite (>1800 km 3 ) and lithium brine (~5000 ppm) accumulation spanning late Miocene to present. Minimum long‐term water discharge needed to sustain halite...