Abstract
The Mar Chiquita Lake is the depocenter of the largest quaternary endorheic basin in Argentina, which includes parts of the provinces of Córdoba, Santiago del Estero, Tucuman, and Salta. The main tributaries are the Primero, Segundo, and Dulce rivers. With a surface area of between 2000 and 6000 km2, depending on the level, Mar Chiquita is the largest lake in Argentina and one of the largest salt lakes in the world. Located in central Argentina, the lake occupies a sunken landform of Pleistocene origin. This chapter includes an overview of the main characteristics of the drainage basin and a detailed description of the geomorphology and geological history of the Mar Chiquita Lake. In addition a detailed analysis is given to (a) the marked changes in the courses of the tributary rivers that occurred in the last three centuries and their implications in terms of the lake hydrology that are explained and (b) the occurrence of enormous salt dust storms in recent years, which resulted from the generation of about 4500 km2 of salt flats on the northern coast of the lake due to oscillations in the lake level caused by climate changes.
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Bucher, E.H. (2019). Geomorphology. In: The Mar Chiquita Salt Lake (Córdoba, Argentina). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15812-5_2
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