The Tebenquiche Lagoon is a salt lake located 9 km from San Pedro of Atacama, in the north of the Atacama salt flat, Antofagasta Region.

The lagoon covers an approximate area of u200bu200b1,300 hectares and is thus one of the largest brackish lagoons in the salar. It is fed by permanent outcrops that allow biodiversity in extreme climatic conditions. These should include extremophilic microbial ecosystems such as biofilms, mats, phytomicrobialites, and evaporites that can withstand extreme alkalinity, salinity, and ultraviolet radiation. Its study allows us to observe the conditions that existed in primitive nature and contains valuable information to understand processes that occurred on a geological scale.^[1]u200b