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Lake Home

November 24, 2015

Peru’s Lake Titicaca has been home to ancient civilizations for mellennia, including the Incan Empire and, most recently, the Uros, who live on a network of manmade, floating islands and travel between islands on distinctive reed boats. The Lake Titicaca basin collects monsoon precipitation, and rivers sweep sediment from surrounding hills into the lake, where it accumulates on the lake bottom. MIT-WHOI Joint Program  student Kyrstin Fornace analyzed leaf wax preserved in lake sediments to trace the path of carbon over time through the planetary system from air to plants to land and eventually to the lake. (Photo by Kyrstin Fornace, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)