Endorheic basin

The shores of Lake Hart, an endorheic desert lake in South Australia

In geography, an endorheic basin—also called a terminal or closed basin—is a watershed from which there is no outflow of water, either on the surface as rivers, or underground by flow or diffusion through rock or permeable material. The term has Greek roots, endo, "inside" and rhein, "to flow". Any rain (or other precipitation) that falls inside an endorheic basin may only leave the system by evaporation. Endorheic basins are also called "internal drainage systems".

Although endorheic basins can occur in any climate, in practice they are most commonly found in hot desert locations. In places with a higher rainfall, the riparian erosion of the water's flow will generally carve drainage channels (particularly in times of flood), breaking through to the larger enclosing hydrological system, and breaking the watershed barrier between the endorheic system and the surrounding terrain. The Black Sea was such a lake, having once been an independent hydrological system in its own right before the Mediterranean Sea broke through the terrain separating the two.

In hot deserts, the net inflow is low and loss to solar evaporation high, drastically slowing the formation of complete drainage systems. The closed nature of this water flow often leads to the concentration of salts and other minerals in the lake; minerals leached from the surrounding rocks are deposited in the endorheic basin, and left behind when the water that bore them there evaporates. Thus endorheic basins often contain extensive salt pans (also called salt flats, salt lakes, alkali flats or playas). These areas, which tend to be large, hard surfaced, and fairly flat, are sometimes used for aviation (as large cheap runways) or for breaking land speed records.

Both permanent and seasonal endorheic lakes can form in endorheic basins, and some endorheic basins are essentially in stasis, the climate having changed to reduce precipitation to such an extent that a lake no longer forms. Even with endorheic lakes that exist permanently, most change size and shape dramatically over time, often becoming dramatically smaller (or breaking into several smaller parts) during the dry season. As humans have expanded into previously unliveable desert areas, the river systems that feed many endorheic lakes have been altered by the construction of dams and aqueducts. As a result many endorheic lakes in developed or developing countries have contracted dramatically. This often results in dramatic increases in salinity, higher concentrations of pollutants, and the consequent disruption of the lake's ecosystem.

Notable endorheic basins and lakes

Map showing major endorheic basins of Earth. Basins are shown in grey; major endorheic lakes are shown in black. (see also Drainage basin.)

There are only five high-desert terminal lakes on Earth: three of the five are in the Middle-East, the other two are in the state of Nevada in the United States. The two lakes in Nevada are Walker Lake, located in Hawthorne (Mineral County), and Pyramid Lake in Reno (Washoe County).

• Much of western and Central Asia is a single, giant inland basin. It contains a number of lakes, including:
  • The Caspian Sea, the largest lake on Earth. In fact, a large part of Eastern Europe drained by the Volga River also belongs to its basin.
  • The Aral Sea, whose tributary rivers have been diverted, leading to a dramatic shrinkage of the lake. The resulting ecological disaster has brought the plight faced by internal drainage basins to public attention.
  • Lake Balkhash, located in Kazakhstan.
  • Issyk Kul, located in Kyrgyzstan.
  • Sistan Lake on the border of Iran and Afghanistan.
• The Dead Sea, the lowest surface point on Earth and one of its saltiest bodies of water, located between Israel and Jordan.

A false-colour satellite photo of Australia's Lake Eyre
Image credit: NASA's Earth Observatory

• Australia, being very dry and having exceedingly low runoff ratios due to its ancient soils, has a great prominence of variable, endorheic drainages. The most important are:
  • Lake Eyre Basin, which drains into the highly variable Lake Eyre and includes Lake Frome.
  • Lake Torrens, to the west of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia.
  • Lake Corangamite, a highly saline crater lake in western Victoria.
  • Lake George, formerly connected to the Murray-Darling Basin
• Africa also has many endorheic watersheds.
  • Lake Turkana
  • The Okavango Delta, an endorheic inland delta in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana
  • Lake Ngami in Botswana
  • Lake Chad (between Chad and Cameroon), fed by the Chari and Logon rivers
  • Etosha pan in Namibia's Etosha National Park
• One of the few endorheic lakes in a cold desert location, Antarctica's Lake Vida remains liquid because its salinity is seven times that of seawater.
• The United States' Great Basin, which covers much of Nevada and Utah, includes:
  • The Black Rock Desert in Nevada, location of the Thrust2 and ThrustSSC landspeed record runs, and the annual home to the Burning Man festival
  • Groom Dry Lake in Nevada, location of the secret Area 51 base
  • Utah's Great Salt Lake, the largest terminal lake in the Western Hemisphere.
  • Utah's Sevier Lake
  • Pyramid Lake in Nevada
  • Mono Lake in California
• California's Salton Sea, a lake accidentally created in 1905 when irrigation canals ruptured, filling a desert endorheic basin and recreating an ancient saline sea.
• The Great Divide Basin in Wyoming, a small endorheic basin which straddles the Continental Divide.
• New Mexico has a number of desert endorheic basins including:
  • The Tularosa Basin, a rift valley;
  • Zuni Salt Lake, a maar;
• Crater Lake in Oregon.
• Devil's Lake in North Dakota.
• Devil's Lake in Wisconsin.
• The Valley of Mexico. In Pre-Columbian times, the Valley was substantially covered with five lakes, including Lake Texcoco and Lake Chalco.
• In Europe there are only two endorheic lakes, Neusiedlersee in Austria and Lake Balaton in Hungary.
• South America:
  • Altiplano basin, one of the largest and second highest in the world.
  • Lake Valencia (Spanish: Lago de Valencia) the second largest lake in Venezuela.

Ancient endorheic basins

Some of the Earth's ancient endorheic systems include:

• The Black Sea, until its merger with the Mediterranean
• The Mediterranean Sea itself and all its tributary basins, during its Messinian dissecation (5 m.y. BP aprox.) as it became disconnected from the Atlantic Ocean.
• Lake Lahontan in the western US
• Ebro and Duero basins, draining most of northern Spain during the Neogene and perhaps Pliocene.
• Lake Bonneville (Utah)

External link

• Primer on endorheic lakes