Playa lakes

A dry lake is an ephemeral lakebed, or a remnant of an endorheic lake. Such flats consist of fine-grained sediments infused with alkali salts. Alternative names for the dry lake include alkali flat, alkali sink and playa.

A playa lake may cover a wide area, but it is never deep. Most water in it evaporates, leaving a layer of salt on the surface. These salt covered stretches are called saltpans. The surface of a dry lake is typically dry, hard and rough during the dry season, but wet and very soft in the rainy season. Dry lakes are generally small, round depressions in the surface of the landscape.

If its basin is primarily salt, then a dry lake is called a salt pan, pan, hardpan, or salt flat (the latter being a remnant of a salt lake). Another dry lake type is the mudflat. Hardpan is the dry terminus of an internally drained basin in a dry climate, a designation typically used in the Great Basin of the western US.

The Spanish word playa (pronounced: [ˈplaʝa]) literally means "beach". Dry lakes are known by this name in some parts of Mexico and the western United States. This term is also used on the Llano Estacado and other parts of the Southern High Plains. In South America, the usual term for a dry lake is salar or salina, Spanish for "salt pan".

Pan is the term used in most of South Africa. These may include the small round highveld pans, typical of the Chrissiesmeer area, to the extensive pans of the Northern Cape province, which are sometimes employed for land speed record attempts. It is also used in Australia. Distinguished are salt pans and clay pans.

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