Talk:Dry lake

A contradiction that needs to be resolved
Paragraph 2 says a playa's "surface is typically dry, hard and rough during the dry season," and the Human Use section says "The extremely flat, smooth and hard surfaces of playas make them ideal surfaces for motor vehicles".

So which is it: "extremely smooth," or "typically rough"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.221.117.58 (talk) 03:06, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

playa as slang
Can the person who deleted the bit about playa being slang for bitch please explain themselves? Because that was a true fact.... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.40.49.34 (talk • contribs) 16:39, 25 July 2006.


 * Sorry if it wasn't clear. There were several reasons:


 * It is irrelevant for this article, which has nothing to do with either beaches or bitches.
 * Slang and words in general do not belong in Wikipedia, but in Wiktionary, unless they have a particular [hi]story (for example, bitch itself, or phrases like series of tubes).
 * "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth". The details about the slang usage were unsourced and therefore unverifiable. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 21:13, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Intended merge
Note that I intend merging salt pan and playa (by doing a proper history-merge) under the name salt pan. Playa's content is rather better; the content of both pages will naturally be conserved in the new page. There's also some overlap with endorheic, so some information that's better there will also get moved. I've leave this a couple of days - please tell me if you have a problem with this. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:26, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Someone has formally proposed this merge. To keep any discussion together, please use talk:salt pan (geology) to discuss the matter. -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 15:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

This has since been rejected at Talk:Salt pan (geology). See also Talk:Black Rock Desert. Following those discussions I removed salt flat from the main list of equivalent terms, and qualified it according to whether the surface is primarily salt. - Fayenatic (talk) 21:08, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Playas are fresh water also
According to the EPA, not all playas are salt flats or even salt water. In fact, this source estimates there are as many as 25,000 playas in the southern high plains of West Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas; most of them fresh water. &mdash;12.74.168.171 01:05, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Are Salinas rare?
User:Leo_III added text about the rarity of salinas: "Another type of playa is a salina. They are very rare, with only 3 on Earth.[citation needed] A salina flat occurs below sea level, behind a rocky, non-porous beach that salt water can easily penetrate through to mix with fresh water from the ground or other sources." I can't find a reference for this. The "Dictionary of mining, mineral, and related terms", compiled and edited by the staff of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, 2nd ed., available on-line via Google, does not mention this definition. I'll ask Leo_III to join the discussion here. Cxbrx (talk) 04:12, 2 January 2008 (UTC) A salina is a playa, especially one with saline water or kept moist by rising groundwater. The referenced webpage is not a very rigorous page, it includes no citations. Cxbrx (talk) 04:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * A little bit more on this: Leo_III's original text did not include "[citation needed]", that was added by User:Xanzzibar.  Also, the page for Salina says:

Andrew L. Lessig III (talk) 23:48, 7 January 2008 (UTC)- Actually I have no refrence for this except for being told this by a person who lives on Santa Catalina Island in California and whom works for the Catalina Conservancy, you'll have to take my word on this.


 * Thanks the the clarification! I was just curious about salinas, they seemed pretty interesting.  I did find two salinas that are below sea level, List of places on land with elevations below sea level mentions Salina Grande and Salina Chica, which are located in Argentina.  I could not find a third salina that was below sea level though.  I'll go ahead and remove the text from the main article, leaving this discussion so that if we find a reference, we can reinstate it.  As a background task, I'll see if I can scrounge up a reference. 02:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cxbrx (talk • contribs)

Playa is a pan
I added the synonym pan to the intro. A playa is not identical to a salt pan or salt lake, which have their own articles. But it appears to be identical to what is called a pan, especially in southern Africa. Some pans are fresh, some salty and some mostly dry, like the large pans in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, or Etosha pan in Namibia, flooding every ±9 years, or Makgadikgadi Pan in Botswana. So playa, or pan, appear to be the general term for these geological features. A South African highveld pan may be identical to the fresh water High Plains playa illustrating the article. It may be safe to assume that one term was coined under Spanish influence, and the other under Dutch influence, while neither need to be limited to an area. JMK (talk) 09:33, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

PRONUNCIATION IS WRONG
Playa is not prounounced "PLUY-A" with the "UY" diphthong. It's more "PLA-YA" with A in PLA as in FATHER. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.33.133.31 (talk) 03:29, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Article moved
Based on discussions in several places, I moved this article. Personally I believe this needs to have the alkali flat material split out into a separate article and probably the salt flat as well. My current focus was driven by a CfD discussion. As noted above, we no longer have an article on a salt plan which is a redirect to here. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:53, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Source for "The water is generally (not) freshwater."
Re this change - What is the source for either version, "The water is generally freshwater", or "The water is generally not freshwater"? I propose removing the sentence, or adding a sentence that dry lakes of each kind occur, with sources. FloraWilde (talk) 20:50, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

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For the benefit of the dozens of people who are not American
This article contains the phrase “a non-native shrub that has been used for rangeland restoration in the west”.

“Non-native” to where? “In the west” of what? Foxmilder (talk) 02:40, 18 November 2023 (UTC)