Badwater Basin — Salt, Water and the Lowest Point
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Transcript
Badwater Basin lies about eighty-six metres below sea level, the lowest land elevation in North America. The bright surface is not a frozen white lake but salt left behind as water repeatedly enters the closed basin and evaporates. Death Valley has no outlet to the ocean, so dissolved minerals accumulate. Rainfall can temporarily flood the flats; heat and dry air then remove the water while salts remain and recrystallize into polygonal crusts. The key process is repetition. A single dry year does not build this landscape. Basin subsidence, mountain erosion, groundwater and countless cycles of flooding and evaporation create the salt floor over long periods.