Landforms in the Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert contains a wide range of unique and special landforms, which reach amazing heights and special physical features. This page will teach you about the most interesting ones.
Rainbow Basin
The Rainbow Basin is known for its fantastic rock formations and fine structures. It doesn't look like a canyon or a basin at all, but it's called both. This colorful basin/canyon is a gash in the wall of a mountain, where it is decorated with geological colors and layers of stone It is basically like a bunch of huge rocks mashed together to produce a fine piece of art, but in truth it's just layers of sandstone and sediment layered on top of each other. This is made by the wind and the water. It makes a small change at every moment in time, with more layers of stone and more colors.
(Click on the pictures below to enlarge them and see some interesting facts)
(Click on the pictures below to enlarge them and see some interesting facts)
Trona Pinnacles
The Trona Pinnacles are known as one of the most unusual geological wonders in North America. These weirdly-shaped landforms were formed during the Pleistocene, where a runoff was spilled into the seas from the Sierra Nevada. This runoff affected a big number lakes and seas such as Mono Lake, Death Valley and Searles Lake. Under the water surface, calcium-rich groundwater and alkaline lake water combined to form tufas. These tufas can reach the height of 43 meters and are 550 meters above seawater. The presence of tufas means that there is a desert. (Click on the pictures below to enlarge them and see some interesting facts)
Other landforms include the Amboy Crater, the Afton Canyon, the San Bernardino Mountains, the Tehachapi Mountains and much more.