Dry Lake Landforms

Dry lake Landform

Dry Lake Landforms Have 2 Main Characteristics:

  1. A lake bed
  2. Remains dry during most of the year

Example of a Dry Lake Landform:

Salar de Uyuni, Andes Mountains, Bolivia
The dry lake picture is an example of a dried up landform.

What is a Dry Lake Landform?

A dry lake is a lake bed with a surface of dry mud or salt and remains dry for most of the year.
A dry lake that is covered with a layer of salt is often called a salt flat.

How are Dry Lakes Formed?

A lake is formed from the water of rain, runoff, rivers and/or streams. When a change in climate occurs and there is a lack of sufficient rainfall, the rivers and streams that feed the lake dry up and the lake evaporates.

During the wet season, when there is sufficient rainfall, part or all of the dry lake may be flooded with from one to several inches of water each year. Over thousands of years this can form a very flat surface on the lake bed.

How Large is a Dry Lake?

Many dry lakes are small, sometimes less than one mile in diameter. The largest can have several thousand square miles of lake bed.

Where Can a Dry Lake Be Found?

Thousands of smaller dry lakes can be found in the high plains of Texas and eastern New Mexico. Larger dry lakes also exist in other regions of the western US and on other continents.

Famous Dry Lakes

• Salar de Uyuni, Andes Mountains, Bolivia
• Racetrack Playa, Death Valley, California, USA
• Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, USA
• Edwards Airforce Base, California, USA

The largest salt flat in the world is Salar de Uyuni in southwest Bolivia. It covers over 4000 square miles at an elevation of almost 12,000 feet in the Andes Mountains. An extremely flat surface and large size make it an excellent target for calibrating the altimeters of satellites in orbit.

A very large quantity of lithium lies under the surface, a valuable mineral needed for making lithium batteries for computers and cellphones. Racetrack Playa is a dry lake in Death Valley, California that is famous for having large stones that seem to move across the surface of the lake bed, leaving tracks behind them.

For a long time, this mystery remained unexplained. However recently, time lapse photography has discovered that thin sheets of ice in the winter, as they begin to melt and float above the surface, can move the rocks forward pushed by the wind. The Bonneville Salt Flats is the largest salt flat in northwestern Utah and is famous as a location for setting many land speed records.

Visitors are also allowed to drive on the lake bed. Edward Airforce base in southern California is a well known facility for testing military and research aircraft. In 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier for the first time at Edwards in the Bell X-1.

Dry Lake definition:

A lake bed that is dry most of the year and has a surface of mud or a layer of salt.




Submit Your Own Landforms

We want pictures and location of the lanforms around the world and we need your help. Click get started button below.

GET STARTED

Today's Featured Picture

The Albers projection is a conic, equal area map projection, named after Heinrich C.

Landform Blog

Himalyan Mountain Range

The Roof of the World: Himalaya Mountain Range

  In Asia, China, India, Nepal, and Bhutan are home to one of the eight wonders of the world and one of the most beautiful mountains in the world, the Himalaya Mountains also called the Himalayas.  Boasting as the world’s highest and most famous mountain peak, Mt. Everest. Within the verse of the ‘Kumarsambhava’, Sanskrit […]

Volcanic Eruption

Volcano Eruption: Tips and Emergency Preparation Before, During and After a Volcanic Eruption

  Nature have provided us with fascinating landforms and features.  The most often adored landforms are volcanoes.  Like the perfect cone structure of Mayon Volcano in the Philippines or Mount Fiji in Japan, people look at their beauty and wonder with great appreciation to nature. Volcanoes are mountains with a very disastrous nature.  Their only […]

Taal-Volcano-Viewed-From-Tagaytay-Ridge

Taal Volcano

  Taal Volcano is the second most active volcano found in the province of Batangas.  A complex volcano in the middle of Taal Lake and is often called an island within a lake, that is an island within a lake that is on an island as well as one of the lowest volcano in the […]

Mayon Volcano

Mayon Volcano

  Mayon Volcano is one of the active volcanoes in the Philippines.  Located in the southern part of Luzon about 473 kilometers (294 miles) from Makati Business District of the Philippines, Mount Mayon is the main landmark of the Province of Albay of Bicol Region. According to local folklore, the volcano was named after Daragang […]

How Landforms Affect Global Temperature and Weather

How Landforms Affect Global Temperature and Weather.

The global temperature and weather is to a large extent a direct result of the sun’s effect to our planet.  Together with the atmosphere and the rotation of the earth on its axis.  The earth on which weather moves on has its own effect on the weather.  The different landforms like mountains, volcanoes, plains, and the […]