|
White Lake at the Muleshoe Wildlife Refuge in the Texas Panhandle. The white on the shore is gypsum deposits. |
|
The interpretive sign at White Lake. This pretty much summarizes how playas form and evolve. |
|
The dike across Paul's Lake. The level difference is clear with the fresh water lake on the right noticeably higher. This was when both lakes looked clear. |
|
The map of Paul's Lake. The "upper lake" is really the lower saline lake. |
|
The alkaline section of Paul's Lake in a good year with ducks all over it. |
|
The Muleshoe Wildlife Refuge was created around a series of playas and therefore is a good example to explain the high plains phenomenon called "playas". The word is Spanish for "beach"; most of them are all beach having water only right after rainstorms.
Playas are depressions which have no outlet for water to leave in the surface of the flat plains of the Llano Estacado in semiarid West Texas and New Mexico. The sign explains how they come to be. There are literally hundreds of them dotting the surface of the Llano. Only a few with larger drainage areas have much permanent water presence.
Most are small, almost unnoticeable, while others are huge. The largest one, Cedar Lake near Lamesa, is privately owned by oil companies which they are drilling wells into. It is 4 miles by 2 miles.
These types of depressions are found in many arid climates around the world: Saudi Arabia, North Africa, China (the dry part), and Iran all have them. They are also found in other parts of the USA but normally only the Spanish Southwestern USA uses the term "playa". There are an estimated 25, 000 in the US. |
|
The lower section of Paul's Lake in 2007. All the alkaline lakes here were choked with this algae bloom making the water actually like pudding. It smells bad and no water fowl will land on it. The trees are tamarisk which the park poisoned since they are water hogging alien trees. |
|
This is a small, typical playa after a wet month near Roy, New Mexico. It is normally a green patch in the middle. |
|
Black Lake, New Mexico (a place, not a town) near Mosquero, New Mexico. I've never seen this playa with any water in it, even in wet years. It is one of the largest dry playas I have found covering about 2 square miles. There are three ranch houses in the bottom of the playa. |
|
A smaller playa near Black Lake on a ranch. The black dots are cows. |
Please wait while we load