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 Wasatch Range or Wasatch Mountains is a mountain range in the western United States that runs about 160 miles (260 km) from the Utah-Idaho border south to central Utah. It is the western edge of the greater Rocky Mountains, and the eastern edge of the Great Basin region. The northern extension of the Wasatch Range, the Bear River Mountains, extends just into Idaho, constituting all of the Wasatch Range in that state.
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.
Carson Sink is a playa in the northeastern portion of the Carson Desert in present-day Nevada, United States of America, that was formerly the terminus of the Carson River. Today the sink is fed by drainage canals of the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District. The southeastern fringe of the sink, where the canals enter, is a wetland of the Central Basin and Range ecoregion.
The Walker River is a river in west-central Nevada in the United States, approximately 62 miles (100 km) long. Fed principally by snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada of California, it drains an arid portion of the Great Basin southeast of Reno and flows into the endorheic basin of Walker Lake. The river is an important source of water for irrigation in its course through Nevada; water diversions have reduced its flow such that the level of Walker Lake has fallen 160 feet (49 m) between 1882 and 2010. The river was named for explorer Joseph Reddeford Walker, a mountain man and experienced scout who is known for establishing a segment of the California Trail.
Naval Air Station Fallon or NAS Fallon is the United States Navy's premier air-to-air and air-to-ground training facility. It is located southeast of the city of Fallon, east of Reno in western Nevada. Since 1996, it has been home to the U.S. Navy-Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN) taking over from the former NAS Miramar in California, and the surrounding area contains 240,000 acres (97,000 ha) of bombing and electronic warfare ranges. It is also home to the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center (NAWDC), which includes TOPGUN, the Carrier Airborne Early Warning Weapons School (CAEWWS) and the Navy Rotary Wing Weapons School Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) training also takes place there.
The Sand Springs Range is a short mountain range located in western Nevada in the United States within the Great Basin. It is approximately 10 miles (16 km) long and is in Churchill County. It separates Salt Wells from Fairview Valley. To the north, it is separated from the Stillwater Range by Sand Springs Pass. To the south is Gabbs Valley.
Honey Lake is an endorheic sink in the Honey Lake Valley in northeastern California, near the Nevada border. Summer evaporation reduces the lake to a lower level of 12 square kilometers and creates an alkali flat. Honey Lake dries almost completely in most years.
The Lahontan Valley is a basin in Churchill County, Nevada, United States. The valley is a landform of the central portion of the prehistoric Lake Lahontan's lakebed of 20,000-9,000 years ago. The valley and the adjacent Carson Sink represent a small portion of the lake bed. Humboldt Lake is to the valley's northeast. Pyramid Lake is west. Walker Lake is to the south. The valley is part of the larger Great Basin Desert, however during the California Gold Rush the valley was often called the Forty Mile Desert.
The Blue Mountains ecoregion is a Level III ecoregion designated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the Pacific Northwest, mainly in the state of Oregon, with small areas over the state border in Idaho and southeastern Washington. It is also contiguous with the World Wildlife Fund's Blue Mountain forests ecoregion.
The Northern Basin and Range ecoregion is a Level III ecoregion designated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. states of Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and California. It contains dissected lava plains, rolling hills, alluvial fans, valleys, and scattered mountain ranges in the northern part of the Great Basin. Although arid, the ecoregion is higher and cooler than the Snake River Plain to the north and has more available moisture and a cooler climate than the Central Basin and Range to the south. Its southern boundary is determined by the highest shoreline of Pleistocene Lake Bonneville, which once inundated the Central Basin and Range. The western part of the region is internally drained; its eastern stream network drains to the Snake River system.
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 Great Basin montane forests is an ecoregion of the Temperate coniferous forests biome, as designated by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
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.
Sarcobatus Flat is a closed valley in western Nye County, Nevada between Goldfield and Beatty. The Bullfrog Hills form the southern boundary and the Grapevine Mountains along with Bonnie Claire Flat form the western boundary. Pahute Mesa bounds the area to the east and north. To the north the flat is contiguous with Lida Valley and Stonewall Flat.
The Death Valley freshwater ecoregion is a freshwater ecoregion in the western United States. It consists of endorheic rivers, lakes, and springs in the drainages of the Owens, Amargosa, and Mojave Rivers, in central-eastern California and southwestern Nevada.
Lovelock Aerial Gunnery Range was a World War II facility in two Nevada areas used for "aerial gunnery, strafing, dive bombing [and] rocket fire". By 21 November 1944, the Lovelock Range had been approved by the Secretary of the Navy to be developed for Naval Air Station Fallon, and on 13 January 1945, "Lovelock Air to Air" began when "leased under the Second War Powers Act". By February 1945, land was being acquired for the North Range in the Black Rock Desert which was 1,122 sq mi (2,910 km2) that included 64.4 sq mi (167 km2) of "Patented" land. The South Range in the Granite Springs Valley was 2,436 sq mi (6,310 km2), and in March 1945 "1920 Acres more" were added.
The Eastern Cordillera Real montane forests (NT0121) is an ecoregion in the eastern range of the Andes of southern Colombia, Ecuador and northern Peru. The ecoregion covers the eastern slopes of the Andes, and includes montane forest that rises from the Amazonian rain forest, with cloud forest and elfin forest at higher elevations. It is rich in species, including many endemics. It is threatened by logging and conversion for pasturage and subsistence agriculture.
The Dixie Valley toad is a species of toad in the family Bufonidae. It is endemic to Churchill County in the state of Nevada in the United States. It was the first new toad species to be described from the United States since the description of the now-extinct in the wild Wyoming toad about 49 years prior.
