salt pan
Sign in to saveAlso known as salt flat, salt pan (geology), alkali flat, salina, alkali land, kavir (Persian)
flat expanse of ground covered with salt and other minerals
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- dry lake
- Image
- Giulia on wet Salar de Uyuni Bolivia Luca Galuzzi 2006.jpg
Show 5 more facts
- Commons category
- Salt flats
- equivalent class
- purl.obolibrary.org/obo/ENVO_00000279
- topic's main category
- Category:Salt flats
- different from
- salt evaporation pond
- OpenStreetMap tag
- natural=sand
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~3 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Salar de Uyuni, in Bolivia, the world's largest salt pan. Natural salt flats or salt pans are flat, open expanses of ground covered with salt and other minerals, usually shining white under the sun. They are found in deserts and are natural formations (unlike salt evaporation ponds, which are artificial).
A salt flat forms by evaporation of a water pool, such as a lake or pond. This happens in climates where the rate of water evaporation exceeds the rate of precipitation — that is, in a desert. If the water cannot drain into the ground, it remains on the surface until it evaporates, leaving behind minerals precipitated from the salt ions dissolved in the water. Over thousands of years, the minerals (usually salts) accumulate on the surface. These minerals reflect the sun's rays and often appear as white areas.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “salt pan” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.