The Carson Desert is a
desert
A desert is a landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions create unique biomes and ecosystems. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About one-third of the la ...
in the
Lahontan Basin and the desert valley of
Churchill County, Nevada (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 Irriga ...
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 during the Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...
, and the watershed became part of Nevada's Conservation Security Program in 2005.
References
Great Basin deserts
Watersheds of the United States
Valleys of Nevada
Landforms of Churchill County, Nevada
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