List of North American deserts

Black Rock Desert, northwest Nevada, a dry lake in the Great Basin Desert

Aerial photo of the Painted Desert in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona

A geological syncline in the Mojave Desert near Barstow, California

Unusual gypsum dunes at White Sands National Monument in the Chihuahuan Desert

Saguaro (detail), icon of the Sonoran Desert. Photo by Ansel Adams, c.1941

Feral horses run across a Sagebrush steppe, Tule Valley, Utah

View of Indian Wells Valley, part of the Mojave (high) desert near Ridgecrest, California

Guadalupe Mountains in Texas 2006

This list of North American deserts identifies areas of the continent which receive less than 10 in (250 mm) annual precipitation. The "North American Desert" is also the term for a large U.S. Level 1 ecoregion (EPA)^[1] of the North American Cordillera, in the Deserts and xeric shrublands biome (WWF). The continent's deserts are largely between the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Madre Oriental on the east, and the rain shadow-creating Sierra Nevada, Transverse, and Peninsular Ranges on the west. The North American xeric region of over 95,751 sq mi (247,990 km²) includes: 3 major deserts; numerous smaller deserts; and large non-desert arid regions; in the western United States and in northeast, central, and northwest Mexico.

Overview

There are three major hot and dry deserts in North America, all located in the Western United States and Northern Mexico.^[2] These are:

• The Chihuahuan Desert – the largest desert in North America, located in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico - (140,000 square miles (360,000 km²))
• The Sonoran Desert – a desert located in the Southwestern United States and Northwest Mexico. It is the second largest desert in North America. - (120,000 square miles (310,000 km²))
• The Mojave Desert – the hottest desert in North America, located primarily in southeastern California - (22,000 square miles (57,000 km²))

Additionally, a large cold desert, the Great Basin Desert, encompasses much of the northern Basin and Range Province, north of the Mojave Desert.

Other smaller cold deserts lie within the Columbia Plateau/Columbia Basin, the Snake River Plain, and the Colorado Plateau regions.

Canada has a small patch of desert along the Thompson River at the Village of Ashcroft.^[3]

Full listing

(Listed from north to south)

• Western Canada
  • Ashcroft - Located along the Thompson River. The entire length of the Thompson River from Kamloops to Lytton is at least semi-arid, but at the midpoint near Ashcroft, the climate is dry enough to be classified as arid.^[3]
• Washington - Idaho - Wyoming - Oregon - Nevada
  • Much of the Columbia Plateau (ecoregion) is desert, such as the
    • Channeled Scablands, a desert in the Columbia Basin of eastern Washington
  • Most of the Snake River Plain (ecoregion) is sagebrush steppe, but barren lava fields form small deserts, such as
    • Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho
  • The Wyoming Basin (ecoregion) is dominated by arid grasslands and shrub steppe, but also contains the
    • Red Desert (Wyoming)
  • Owyhee Desert, in southwestern Idaho, northern Nevada, and southeastern Oregon.
    • Yp Desert, a portion of the Owyhee Desert in Idaho
  • Oregon High Desert, aka "Great Sandy Desert", eastern Oregon
    • Alvord Desert, a dry lake bed.
  • Northwest Lahontan subregion in Nevada-part of the Northern Basin and Range (ecoregion)
    • Black Rock Desert, a dry lake bed.
• Great Basin Desert
  • Nevada, dominated by sagebrush steppe
    • Forty Mile Desert, in northwest Nevada
    • Smoke Creek Desert, Nevada (980 sq mi)
    • Carson Desert
  • Utah
    • Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah
    • Sevier Desert surrounds the intermittent, salty Sevier Lake
      • Black Rock Desert volcanic field
    • Escalante Desert (3,270 sq mi)
• Colorado Plateau
  • Utah
    • San Rafael Desert, the drier portions of the San Rafael Swell
  • Colorado, dominated by pinyon-juniper woodlands, but contains desert areas where unfavorable soil conditions exist:
    • Bisti Badlands Desert, New Mexico
    • Painted Desert, Arizona
• Mojave Desert
  • California (the High Desert); and parts of western Arizona and southern Nevada.
    • Death Valley, California
  • Amargosa Desert, Nevada
• Sonoran Desert
  • Colorado Desert, Southern California (the Low Desert)
    • Yuha Desert, Imperial Valley, California
  • Yuma Desert, southwest Arizona
  • Lechuguilla Desert, southwest Arizona
  • Tule Desert (Arizona) and Sonora, Mexico
  • Gran Desierto de Altar, Sonora, Mexico
  • Baja California Desert, State of Baja California, Mexico
    • Vizcaíno Desert, central State of Baja California, Mexico
• Chihuahuan Desert
  • Trans-Pecos Desert, west Texas
  • White Sands, unusual gypsum dune field in New Mexico

Western arid regions of North America

The separately defined western arid regions of North America are continental regions of aridity based on available water in addition to rain shadow-diminished rainfall ^[4] and which have many non-desert shrub-steppe (EPA) and xeric shrublands (WWF) in addition to desert ecosystems and ecoregions. This large arid region of 190,000 sq mi (490,000 km²) includes: deserts, such as the Great Basin Desert and Sonoran Desert; and the non-desert arid region areas (with greater than 10 inches annual precipitation) in the Great Basin arid region, Colorado Plateau, Mexican Plateau, and others. This arid region extends from the top of the North American Desert in Washington and Idaho southward into Mexico in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt. The 'western arid region' is east of and (except for Mojave sky islands) discontiguous from the Mojave Desert,^[5] unlike the southwestern Great Basin deserts adjacent with ecotones to the northern Mojave Desert.

See also

• North American Deserts in List of ecoregions in the United States (EPA)
• North American Deserts in List of ecoregions in North America (CEC)
• List of deserts
• Semi-arid climate
• Deserts of California
• Great American Desert
• Desert of Maine
• Desert ecology
• Deserts and xeric shrublands - biome and ecoregions

References

1. epa.gov: Level 1 Ecoregions
2. "Desert Biome," University of California Museum of Paleontology.
3. Canada's Only True Desert
4. (1953 Meigs criteria)
5. "The World's Largest Desert". Geology and Earth Science. geology.com. Retrieved 2010-04-25.