The Carson Desert is a
desert
A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About on ...
in the
Lahontan Basin and the desert valley of
Churchill County, Nevada
Churchill County is a county in the western U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 census, the population was 25,516. Its county seat is Fallon. Named for Mexican–American War hero brevet Brigadier General Sylvester Churchill, the county wa ...
(U.S.), which receives an average annual precipitation. The desert is the low valley area (including the
Carson Sink
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 Irrigat ...
in the north of the valley) between the adjacent mountain ranges,
while the larger watershed includes the interior slopes of the demarcating ranges.
Churhill County watersheds
/ref> The desert was inundated by Lake Lahontan
Lake Lahontan was a large endorheic Pleistocene lake of modern northwestern Nevada that extended into northeastern California and southern Oregon. The area of the former lake is a large portion of the Great Basin that borders the Sacramento Riv ...
during the Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...
, and the watershed became part of Nevada's Conservation Security Program
The Conservation Security Program (CSP) was a voluntary conservation program in the United States that supported stewardship of private agricultural lands by providing payments and technical assistance for maintaining and enhancing natural resou ...
in 2005.
References
Great Basin deserts
Watersheds of the United States
Valleys of Nevada
Landforms of Churchill County, Nevada
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