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Reputed to be the driest desert in the world, the Atacama Desert in the Central Andes of Northern Chile is an extreme environment with high UV radiation, wide temperature variation, and minimum precipitation. Scarce lagoons associated with salt flats (salars) in this desert are the surface expression of shallow groundwater; these ponds serve as refugia for life and often host microbial communities associated with evaporitic mineral deposition. Results based on multidisciplinary field campaigns and associated laboratory examination of samples collected from the Puquios of the Salar de Llamara in the Atacama Desert during austral summer provide unprecedented detail regarding the spatial heterogeneity of physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of these salar environments. Four main lagoons (‘Puquios’) and more than 400 smaller ponds occur within an area less than 5 km², and are characterized by …