The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja California. It is noted for both its arid climate and the basin and range topography that varies from the North American low point at Badwater Basin in Death Valley to the highest point of the contiguous United States, less than 100 miles (160 km) away at the summit of Mount Whitney. The region spans several physiographic divisions, biomes, ecoregions, and deserts.
The Black Rock Desert is a semi-arid region of lava beds and playa, or alkali flats, situated in the Black Rock Desert–High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, a silt playa 100 miles (160 km) north of Reno, Nevada that encompasses more than 300,000 acres (120,000 ha) of land and contains more than 120 miles (200 km) of historic trails. It is in the northern Nevada section of the Great Basin with a lakebed that is a dry remnant of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan.
The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range. The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife Fund, and the Central Basin and Range ecoregion defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and United States Geological Survey. It is a temperate desert with hot, dry summers and snowy winters. The desert spans large portions of Nevada and Utah, and extends into eastern California. The desert is one of the four biologically defined deserts in North America, in addition to the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts.
The ecology of California can be understood by dividing the state into a number of ecoregions, which contain distinct ecological communities of plants and animals in a contiguous region. The ecoregions of California can be grouped into four major groups: desert ecoregions, Mediterranean ecoregions, forested mountains, and coastal forests.
The Quinn River, once known as the Queen River, is an intermittent river, approximately 110 miles (180 km) long, in the desert of northwestern Nevada in the United States. It drains an enclosed basin inside the larger Great Basin.
The Amargosa River is an intermittent waterway, 185 miles (298 km) long, in southern Nevada and eastern California in the United States. It drains a high desert region, the Amargosa Valley in the Amargosa Desert northwest of Las Vegas, into the Mojave Desert, and finally into Death Valley where it disappears into the ground aquifer. Except for a small portion of its route in the Amargosa Canyon in California and a small portion at Beatty, Nevada, the river flows above ground only after a rare rainstorm washes the region. A 26-mile (42 km) stretch of the river between Shoshone and Dumont Dunes is protected as a National Wild and Scenic River. At the south end of Tecopa Valley the Amargosa River Natural Area protects the habitat.
The Grapevine Mountains are a mountain range located along the border of Inyo County, California and Nye County, Nevada in the United States. The mountain range is about 22 miles (35 km) long and lies in a northwest-southeasterly direction along the Nevada-California state line. The range reaches an elevation of 8,738 feet (2,663 m) at Grapevine Peak, near Phinney Canyon on the Nevada side. Daylight Pass is at the southern end of the range. Most of the Grapevine Mountain chain is in Death Valley National Park.
The Smoke Creek Desert is an arid region of northwestern Nevada, that lies about 60 miles (97 km) to the north of Pyramid Lake, west of the Fox Range and east of the Smoke Creek Mountains. The southern end of the desert lies on the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, and a rail line lies at the eastern edge. The Smoke Creek Desert is southwest of the Black Rock Desert's South Playa and is between the Granite Range and the Fox Range.
The Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR) is one of two military training areas at the Nellis Air Force Base Complex in Nevada and used by the United States Air Force Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base. The NTTR land area includes a "simulated Integrated Air Defense System", several individual ranges with 1200 targets, and 4 remote communication sites. The current NTTR area and the range's former areas have been used for aerial gunnery and bombing, for nuclear tests, as a proving ground and flight test area, for aircraft control and warning, and for Blue Flag, Green Flag, and Red Flag exercises.
The Eldorado Mountains, also called the El Dorado Mountains, are a north-south trending mountain range in southeast Nevada bordering west of the south-flowing Colorado River; the endorheic Eldorado Valley borders the range to the west, and the range is also on the western border of the Colorado River's Black Canyon of the Colorado, and El Dorado Canyon on the river. The range is 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada; and the Eldorado Mountains connect with the Highland and Newberry mountains.
The Selenite Range is a mountain range in western Pershing County, Nevada. The range is a north–south trending feature approximately 27 miles (43 km) long and 4 miles (6.4 km) wide.
The Seven Troughs Range is a mountain range in western Pershing County, Nevada.
The Bullfrog Hills are a small mountain range of the Mojave Desert in southern Nye County, southwestern Nevada. Bullfrog Hills was so named from a fancied resemblance of its ore to the color of a bullfrog.
The Gabbs Valley Range is a mountain range in the west of the central Nevada desert in the Great Basin region. The range is within Mineral County, Nevada.
The Pine Forest Range is a mountain range in Humboldt County, in the U.S. state of Nevada. It is north of the Black Rock Desert.
The Trout Creek Mountains are a remote, semi-arid Great Basin mountain range mostly in southeastern Oregon and partially in northern Nevada in the United States. The range's highest point is Orevada View Benchmark, 8,506 feet (2,593 m) above sea level, in Nevada. Disaster Peak, elevation 7,781 feet (2,372 m), is another prominent summit in the Nevada portion of the mountains.
The Carson Desert is a desert in the Lahontan Basin and the desert valley of Churchill County, Nevada (U.S.), which receives an average 5 inches (130 mm) annual precipitation. The desert is the low valley area between the adjacent mountain ranges, while the larger watershed includes the interior slopes of the demarcating ranges. The desert was inundated by Lake Lahontan during the Pleistocene, and the watershed became part of Nevada's Conservation Security Program in 2005.
The Mountain states form one of the nine geographic divisions of the United States that are officially recognized by the United States Census Bureau. It is a subregion of the Western United States.
Robert Phillip Sharp was an American geomorphologist and expert on the geological surfaces of the Earth and the planet Mars. Sharp served as the chairman of the Division of Geological Sciences at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 1952 to 1968. He built the modern department and especially recruited new faculty in geochemistry, tectonic geomorphology, planetary science, and field geology.
