Panoramic Badwater Turtleback@Badwater Basin
by Bnte Creations
Title
Panoramic Badwater Turtleback@Badwater Basin
Artist
Bnte Creations
Medium
Photograph
Description
Salt flats and Badwater Turtleback@Badwater Basin at California's Death Valley National Park.
Badwater Turtleback fault separates an upper plate of volcanic and sedimentary rocks from a lower plate of predominantly mylonitic plutonic and metamorphic rocks.
Rare rainfall fills the salt polygons at Badwater Basin.
Badwater Basin is an endorheic basin in Death Valley National Park, Death Valley, Inyo County, California, noted as the lowest point in North America, with a depth of 282 ft (86 m) below sea level. Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous 48 United States, is only 84.6 miles (136 km) to the northwest.
The site itself consists of a small spring-fed pool of "bad water" next to the road in a sink; the accumulated salts of the surrounding basin make it undrinkable, thus giving it the name. The pool does have animal and plant life, including pickleweed, aquatic insects, and the Badwater snail.
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.
* Copyright Bnte Creations.
Uploaded
May 31st, 2020
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