Geography
The Racetrack Playa is 3608 feet (1130 m) above sea level, and 2.8 miles (4.5 km) long (north-south) by 1.3 miles (2 km) wide (east-west). It is also exceptionally flat and level with the northern end being only 1.5 inches (4 cm) higher than the southern. The highest point surrounding it is 5,678 feet (1731 m) high Ubehebe Peak, rising 1970 feet (571 m) above the lakebed 0.85 mile (1.37 km) to the west.
The playa is in the small Racetrack Valley endorheic basin between the Cottonwood Mountains on the east and Nelson Range to the west. During periods of heavy rain, water washes down from the mountains onto the playa, forming a shallow, short-lived endorheic lake. Under the hot desert sun the thin veneer of water quickly evaporates leaving behind a surface layer of soft slick mud. As the mud dries it shrinks and cracks into a mosaic pattern of interlocking polygons.
The shape of the shallow hydrocarbon lake Ontario Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan has been compared to that of Racetrack Playa.
Read more about this topic: Racetrack Playa
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)
“The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)