Tag Archive for: Great Salt Lake Desert

Gypsum crystals from drying mudflats are blown into dunes patterned with sinuous ripples along the eastern margin of the Great Salt Lake Desert. Gypsum—an evaporite mineral that is soluble in water—is an uncommon constituent of sand. Knolls Dunes, Tooele County, Utah. Photo by Andy Cvar.

Gypsum crystals from drying mudflats are blown into dunes patterned with sinuous ripples along the eastern margin of the Great Salt Lake Desert. Gypsum—an evaporite mineral that is soluble in water—is an uncommon constituent of sand.

Knolls Dunes, Tooele County, Utah. Photo by Andy Cvar.

 

Silver Island Mountains, Box Elder County, Utah
Photographer: Gregg Beukelman; © 2013

Chemical weathering produces pits and holes in the surface of Jurassic-age quartz monzonite at Crater Island, in the northeast part of the Basin and Range Province. The “island” of rock rises from the barren, salt-covered plains of the Great Salt Lake Desert east of the distant Pilot Range.