The Salton Sea in the Sonoran Desert
The Salton Sea in the Sonoran Desert Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features the Sonoran Desert in Southern California, including the Salton Sea. The photograph was captured using a camera mounted on the outside of the International Space Station.
According to NASA, the nearby Orocopia and Chocolate Mountains contain a mix of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks along the San Andreas Fault. This region was used by Apollo crews as they trained for their trips to the Moon. North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be described as the northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. Because it is on the North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as part of North America geographically. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers (9,540,000 square miles), about 16.5% of the Earth’s land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third-largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe.
The Salton Sea is California’s largest lake. The water has no natural outlet, and the lake is saltier than the ocean.
Farmland is concentrated on both sides of the Salton Sea, and water from agriculture runs off into the lake.
Experts say that this runoff does not provide enough water to balance out the water lost to evaporation, which means that the Salton Sea will become even saltier over time.
Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
–—
By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer
