Last Chance Lake

Last Chance Lake is a soda lake in British Columbia, Canada, with the highest naturally occurring concentration of dissolved inorganic phosphate in the world. It is a closed-basin lake, which allows it to maintain high salinity and carbonate alkalinity. In the wet season, it is ~25 cm at its deepest point, while in the dry season, brine pools separated by evaporitic salts form. The lake has garnered attention from scientists who study the origin of life, as it serves as a modern analog for lakes on early Earth and it offers a possible solution to the "phosphate problem of the origin of life": dissolved inorganic phosphate concentrations are low in most natural environments, yet high concentrations are needed for the prebiotic chemistry that led to the origin of life.

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