Puquio de Núñez is a small

oasis In ecology, an oasis (; : oases ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment orchard An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit tree, fruit- or nut (fruit), nut-producing trees that are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also so ...

in the

Atacama Desert The Atacama Desert () is a desert plateau located on the Pacific Ocean, Pacific coast of South America, in the north of Chile. Stretching over a strip of land west of the Andes Mountains, it covers an area of , which increases to if the barre ...

of Chile. The oasis is irrigated by an underground canal, a

puquio Puquio (from Quechua: ''Pukyu'', meaning "spring of water") is a town in Central Peru, South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller port ...

tapping Pampa del Tamarugal Aquifer. Puqui de Núñez lies about 10 kilometers south of the nearby oases of Matilla and Pica. As the puquios of Pica and Matilla tap the

Pica Aquifer Pica Aquifer () located in Tarapacá Region of Norte Grande, northern Chile is one of the most important aquifers of Atacama Desert. The water of the aquifer is tapped by a system of underground aqueducts known as puquios to irrigate the oasis, oas ...

, it is thought that the hydraulic divide between the aquifers of Pampa del Tamarugal and Pica should be between Puquio de Núñez and Matilla. Located 1,187 meters

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of a location's vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) in reference to a vertical datum based on a historic mean sea level. In geodesy, it is formalized as orthometric height. The zero level ...

(m asl.) the water at Puquio de Núñez is estimated to come from a recharge zone at ~3,000 m asl.

References

Oases of Chile Geography of Tarapacá Region Localities irrigated by puquios Orchards {{Tarapacá-geo-stub