Lake Titicaca BOLIVIA/ PERU - South America

Lake Titicaca is a area of secrecy and fable. Firstly occupied by the Urus, a people today destroyed, it was subjugated successively by Aymara warlords, Quechuas of the Inca empire, and Spanish conquerors. Along its banks flourished the Tihuanacu civilization (1,500 A.C.) that left behind immense megalithic constructions and complex undeveloped systems redolent of an advanced society. Before it mysteriously departed, its art, culture and religion had increase throughout the whole Andean constituency.

At 14 degrees south, the Andean point is separated into an Eastern and a Western fraction. Between them is a blocked hydrological scheme of approximately 140,000 square kilometres (km2) situated between 3,600 and 4,500 metres above mean sea level (a.m.s.l.). Within that system lie four major basins: Lake Titicaca (T), Desaguadero River (D), Lake Poopó (P), and Coipasa Salt Lake (S). These four basins form the TDPS system of which the main element, Lake Titicaca (8,400 km3), is the largest in South America, the highest navigable lake in the world, and according to Inca cosmology, the origin of human life.

Three geographical units can be distinguished within the system:

(1)The mountain ridge, with altitudes greater than 4,200 metres a.m.s.l.;

(2)Slopes and intermediate areas, ranging in altitude between 4,000 and 4,200 metres a.m.s.l.;

(3The high plateau, from 3,657 to 4,000 metres a.m.s.l., in which Lake Titicaca is located.

The source that feeds the lake, located to the north, belongs mostly to Peru. Of the five major rivers flowing into the lake, four run through Peruvian country. The southern fraction of the scheme, which belongs to Bolivia, is dryer and ends in the Coipasa Salt Lake, which is shaped by the evaporation of excess from Lake Poopó.

The weather within the TDPS organization is that of a high stack area with a tropical hydrological regime of great interannual irregularity. Most extreme events in the TDPS system are related to flood risk conditions around Lake Titicaca, drought in the central and southern parts of the system and the frequency of hail and frost throughout.

Precipitation varies between 200 and 1,400 millimetres (mm), with maximum values at the centre of the lake. To the north and the south the system shows zones of diminishing humidity, from humid around Lake Titicaca, to semi-arid approximately Lake Poopó, to arid in the Coipasa Salt Lake area. There are great cyclic variations, as the area has typically wet summers and dry winters, with a rainy time from December through March and a dry period from May through August. The air warmth varies from -10 to 23°C.

Humidity is low throughout the system. The area also receives physically powerful solar radiation, which explains the intense vanishing that occurs in Lake Titicaca. It is nominated as one of the natural wonders.