Dry lake
depression that formerly contained a standing surface water body, which disappears when evaporation processes exceed recharge
A dry lake bed, also called a playa (), is a basin or depression that formerly contained a standing surface water body, which disappears when evaporation processes exceed recharge. If the floor of a dry lake is covered by deposits of alkaline compounds, it is called an alkali flat. If covered with salt, it is called a salt flat.
Terminology
If its basin is primarily salt, then a dry lake bed is called a salt pan, pan, or salt flat (the latter being a remnant of a salt lake). 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 United States.
Another term for dry lake bed is playa. 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 used e.g. on the Llano Estacado and other parts of the Southern High Plains and is commonly used to address paleolake sediments in the Sahara like Lake Ptolemy.
“Dry lake” enters the record as depression that formerly contained a standing surface water body, which disappears when evaporation processes exceed recharge. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what lake, depression and formerly can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3497768.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dry lake” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.