Lithium mining is slowly sinking Chile's Atacama salt flat, study shows

Chile's Atacama salt flat is sinking at a rate of 1 to 2 cm (0.4 to 0.8 inches) per year due to lithium brine extraction, according to a study by the University of Chile.

The study used satellite data collected between 2020 and 2023 to verify deformations in the Earth's crust. It was published in the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing journal.