Badwater Basin is an
endorheic basin
An endorheic basin (; also spelled endoreic basin or endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, but drainage converges instead into lakes ...
in
Death Valley National Park,
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley in Eastern California, in the northern Mojave Desert, bordering the Great Basin Desert. During summer, it is the Highest temperature recorded on Earth, hottest place on Earth.
Death Valley's Badwater Basin is the ...
,
Inyo County, California
Inyo County () is a county in the eastern central part of the U.S. state of California, located between the Sierra Nevada and the state of Nevada. In the 2020 census, the population was 19,016. The county seat is Independence. Inyo County is ...
, noted as the lowest point in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, with a
depth of below
sea level
Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised g ...
.
[ ]Mount Whitney
Mount Whitney (Paiute: Tumanguya; ''Too-man-i-goo-yah'') is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States and the Sierra Nevada, with an elevation of . It is in East–Central California, on the boundary between California's Inyo and Tu ...
, the highest point in the contiguous United States
The contiguous United States (officially the conterminous United States) consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the Federal District of the United States of America. The term excludes the only two non-contiguous states, Alaska and Hawaii ...
, is only to the northwest.
The site itself consists of a small spring
Spring(s) may refer to:
Common uses
* Spring (season)
Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of ...
-fed pool of "bad water" next to the road in a sink
A sink is a bowl-shaped plumbing fixture for washing hands, dishwashing, and other purposes. Sinks have a tap (faucet) that supply hot and cold water and may include a spray feature to be used for faster rinsing. They also include a drain t ...
; the accumulated salt
Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantitie ...
s of the surrounding basin make it undrinkable, thus giving it the name. The pool does have animal
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Kingdom (biology), biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals Heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, are Motilit ...
and plant life
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...
, including pickleweed Pickleweed is a common name used for two unrelated genera of flowering plants:
*'' Batis'', family Bataceae
*''Salicornia
''Salicornia'' is a genus of succulent, halophytic (salt tolerant) flowering plants in the family Amaranthaceae that gro ...
, aquatic insect
Aquatic insects or water insects live some portion of their life cycle in the water. They feed in the same ways as other insects. Some ''diving'' insects, such as predatory diving beetles, can hunt for food underwater where land-living insects c ...
s, and the Badwater snail
The Badwater snail (''Angustassiminea infima'') is a species of minute, salt marsh snail endemic to the Badwater Basin in Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley in Eastern California, in the northern Mojave Desert, bordering the Gre ...
.
Adjacent to the pool, where water is not always present at the surface, repeated freeze–thaw and evaporation cycles gradually push the thin salt crust into hexagonal honeycomb shapes.
The pool is not the lowest point of the basin: the lowest point (which is only slightly lower) is several miles to the west and varies in position, depending on rainfall and evaporation patterns. The salt flats Salt flats, Salt flat, Salt Flats, or Salt Flat may refer to: Geology
*Salt pan (geology), a flat expanse of ground covered with salt and other minerals
*Dry lake, an ephemeral lakebed that consists of fine-grained sediments infused with alkali salt ...
are hazardous to traverse (in many cases being only a thin white crust over mud), and so the sign marking the low point is at the pool instead. The basin was considered the lowest elevation in the Western Hemisphere until the discovery of Laguna del Carbón
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Laguna del Carbón ( Spanish for "coal lagoon") is a salt lake in Corpen Aike Department, Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. This salt lake is located from Puerto San Julián, within the ''Gran Bajo de San Julián'' (Great San Julián Dep ...
in Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
at .
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Geography
At Badwater Basin, significant rainstorms flood the valley bottom periodically, covering the salt pan with a thin sheet of standing water. Newly formed lakes do not last long though, because the of average rainfall is overwhelmed by a annual evaporation
Evaporation is a type of vaporization that occurs on the surface of a liquid as it changes into the gas phase. High concentration of the evaporating substance in the surrounding gas significantly slows down evaporation, such as when humidi ...
rate. This is the greatest evaporation potential in the United States, meaning that a lake could dry up in a single year. When the basin is flooded, some of the salt is dissolved; it is redeposited as clean crystals when the water evaporates.
A popular site for tourists is the sign marking "sea level" on the cliff above the Badwater Basin. Similar to Owens Lake
Owens Lake is a mostly dry lake in the Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California. It is about south of Lone Pine, California. Unlike most dry lakes in the Basin and Range Province that have been dry for ...
, it is characterized by a deep bed of unconsolidated valley fill from which the salt crust emerges.
Climate
History
The current best understanding of the area's geological history is that the entire region between the Colorado River
The Colorado River ( es, Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The river drains an expansive, arid drainage basin, watershed that encompasses parts of ...
in the east and Baja California
Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...
in the southwest (and bordered by various uplifts and mountains around the west-northwest-northern perimeters) has seen numerous cycles since at least the start of the Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...
(and perhaps up to 3 Ma) of pluvial
In geology and climatology, a pluvial is either a modern climate characterized by relatively high precipitation or an interval of time of variable length, decades to thousands of years, during which a climate is characterized by relatively high ...
lakes of varying size in a complex cycle mainly tied to changing climate patterns (particularly, glaciation during the numerous recent Ice Age cycles), but also influenced by the progressive depositing of alluvial plain
An alluvial plain is a largely flat landform created by the deposition of sediment over a long period of time by one or more rivers coming from highland regions, from which alluvial soil forms. A floodplain is part of the process, being the sma ...
s and deltas
A river delta is a landform shaped like a triangle, created by deposition of sediment that is carried by a river and enters slower-moving or stagnant water. This occurs where a river enters an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, reservoir, or (more rarel ...
by the Colorado River (cf. Salton Sea
The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly saline body of water in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the Salton Trough that stretches to the Gulf o ...
), alternating with periodic water body breakthroughs and rearrangements due to erosion
Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distin ...
and the proximity of the San Andreas Fault
The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonics, tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is Fault (geology)#Strike-slip fau ...
. This has resulted in a high number of evaporating and reforming endorheic
An endorheic basin (; also spelled endoreic basin or endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, but drainage converges instead into lakes ...
lakes throughout the Quaternary Period
The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three period (geology), periods of the Cenozoic era (geology), Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spa ...
in the area, with an intertwined history of various larger bodies of water subsuming smaller ones during water table maxima and the subsequent splitting and disappearance thereof during the evaporative part of the cycles. Although these local cycles are now somewhat modified by human presence, their legacy persists; despite appearances much to the contrary, Death Valley actually sits atop one of the largest aquifer
An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing, permeable rock, rock fractures, or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, or silt). Groundwater from aquifers can be extracted using a water well. Aquifers vary greatly in their characterist ...
s in the world.
Throughout the Quaternary's wetter spans, streams running from nearby mountains filled Death Valley, creating Lake Manly
Lake Manly was a pluvial lake in Death Valley, California, covering much of Death Valley with a surface area of during the so-called "Blackwelder stand". Water levels varied through its history, and the chronology is further complicated by act ...
, which during its greatest extents was approximately 80 mi (130 km) long and up to 600 ft (180 m) deep. Numerous evaporation cycles and a lack of outflow caused an increasing hypersalinity, typical for endorheic bodies of water. Over time, this hypersalinization, combined with sporadic rainfall and occasional aquifer intrusion, has resulted in periods of "briny soup", or salty pools, on the lowest parts of Death Valley's floor. Salts (95% table salt – NaCl
Sodium chloride , commonly known as salt (although sea salt also contains other chemical salts), is an ionic compound with the chemical formula NaCl, representing a 1:1 ratio of sodium and chloride ions. With molar masses of 22.99 and 35.45 g/ ...
) began to crystallize, coating the surface with the thick crust, ranging from , now observable at the basin floor.
The Timbisha
The Timbisha ("rock paint", Timbisha language: Nümü Tümpisattsi) are a Native American tribe federally recognized as the Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California. They are known as the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and are located in sout ...
tribe of Native Americans, formerly known as the Panamint Shoshone, are the original inhabitants of the Badwater Basin area. They have inhabited the valley for at least the past millennium.
See also
*Death Valley pupfish
The Death Valley pupfish (''Cyprinodon salinus''), also known as Salt Creek pupfish, is a small species of fish in the family Cyprinodontidae found only in Death Valley National Park, California, United States. There are two recognized subspec ...
*List of elevation extremes by country
The following sortable table lists land surface elevation extremes by country or dependent territory.
Topographic elevation is the vertical distance above the reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gr ...
*List of elevation extremes by region
The following three sortable tables list land surface elevation extremes by region.
Elevation is the vertical distance above the reference geoid, an equipotential gravitational Equipotential surface, surface model of the Earth's sea level.
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References
Notes
Further reading
*Don J. Easterbrook (Hrsg):
Quaternary Geology of the United States
'. Geological Society of America 2003, , S.63–64
*
* John McKinney:
California's Desert Parks: A Day Hiker's Guide
'. Wilderness Press 2006, , S. 54–55
External links
Badwater Basin
in the Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...
{{authority control
Death Valley
Death Valley National Park
Endorheic basins of the United States
Lakes of the Mojave Desert
Lowest points
Salt flats of California
Landforms of Inyo County, California
Landforms of San Bernardino County, California
Springs of California
Bodies of water of San Bernardino County, California
Lakes of Southern California
Lakes of California