PLAYA, PINACATE BIOSPHERE RESERVE

A playa is a temporary lake, where water accumulates after rains but then evaporates during the hotter times of year, causing the soil to become increasingly salty as the dissolved minerals accumulate, so that eventually no plants grow in that area. This image shows a playa (light-coloured circular area) in the middle distance.

View from the rim of the cone, Cerro Colorado. Rocks and other large particles thrown from volcanic eruptions are seen on the steep slope of the cone colonised by shrubs and trees in the foreground. The land then flattens out into a brown coloured area of very fine soil apparently devoid of plants (but see the images below), before another vegetated zone is seen stretching back to the distant mountains. Within that vegetated zone is a large light-coloured playa.

The brown-coloured area below the cone consists of cinders and gravel overlying sand, with a slope of a few degrees, causing water to run off this area into the playa. Although apparently devoid of plants, its surface was covered with two low-growing species that typically grow in dry, sandy areas - trailing four o' clock (Allionia) and cranesbill (Erodium), shown in the images below.

Trailing four o' clock

Cranesbill (click image for details)

GO TO:
Pinacate Thumbnail images?
Pinacate Volcanic Field: space radar image?
El Elegante crater?
Elegante crater rim?
"Bombs and cinders"?
Colorado crater?
Lava fields?
Pinacate desert floor?
Pinacate campsite?
Pinacate plants?
Lava plants?
Pinacate desert wash?