Photo Essay
Shafter Lake – A salt lake or salt playa
Salt playas are harsh environments. The soil is alkaline (high pH). Few plants can live in alkaline soils. To the east and northeast of the larger salt playa are aeolian (wind blown) deposits from the floor of the playa. Around the larger playas cliffs five to forty feet in height are often found. After a rain, the water in the playa is neutral, and somewhat palatable, but as the water dries, it becomes saltier. Salt crystals are often found in the bottom of the salt playas, and the salt played an important role in the commerce of Indians and early Hispanic and Anglo settlers. The majority of these pictures were taken at Shafter Lake, a few miles northwest of Andrews, Texas.
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Although this appears to be a coastal beach scene, it is in the southwestern reaches of the Llano Estacado.
Historically, rains most often fall on the Llano Estacado in May and September. The later rains sometimes fill up the larger salt playas and water will remain until spring. Sandhill cranes spend winter nights sleeping while standing in the water as protection from predators.
Before a person walks very far on the surface of the playa, he or she begins to crunch through the crust of salty soil.
Often when a person nears the water, under the dry white crust is stinky goopy black mud.
The bottom of the playa is not always all white - sometimes soil washing in from the west brings the reddish sands common to the southern Llano Estacado.
If a person hunkers down and takes a good look at the crusty white soil, small salt crystals can be seen. In some of the salt playas the salt is as pure as table salt, but in other playas other evaporites are present. (And some can be poisonous.)
A small scarab beetle washed into the playa during a heavy rainstorm, but before it could leave, salt dried on its elytra, and slowly desiccated the beetle.
A grasshopper that accidentally flies into the water is guaranteed death.
Sometimes the shore of a salt playa will be littered with thousands of invertebrates washed into the playa by a rain - even land snails.
Or even tarantulas!
Mammals are not exempt from the danger, either, like this packrat.
When the water's edge is finally reached on the lee shore the wind churns the water, and foam is often present.
Wood is slowly destroyed by salt water. As the crystals form, the wood fibers are frayed.
Every decade or two, a landowner that fences often a portion of a playa has to replace wooden fence posts.
Telephone poles are not exempt, either. Notice how the one in the distance is leaning.
An observer will often notice designs created in the salt and silt by wave action and floodwaters from rain.
Although fish are rarely found in the water of a salt playa, herons still visit the shores in the hope of finding a meal.
In an isolated pool of water, an astute observer noticed tiny reddish invertebrates squiggling about in the water. At times, billions of brine shrimp are present in salt playas, and a number of species of birds will come to feast.
Rainwater flooding down from the surrounding countryside will often leave erosion channels.
The floodwaters often carry the reddish soil from the surrounding area, and the heavier grains of sand are dropped before it reaches the open water of the playa.
After a big flood with a heavy organic load, the northeastern shore will be covered with finely ground organic material from the pastures nearby, and later wave action cuts away at it, leaving an easily discernible edge to the deposition.
Brine flies are found throughout the warm months. If conditions are right, billions will be produced, and again, birds come to feast. Even humans have eaten brine flies, mashed together in cakes.
Tiger beetles prefer bare soil next to a playa.
The tiger beetles are often found near windrows of organic material that is still drying, hunting the brine flies and other detrivore (eating decaying material) insects.
This water boatmen landed in the water, but it is adapted to fresh water, and it, too, paid the price as salt encrusted its elytra.
Deer sometimes come to the water to see if it is fit for a drink.
Coyotes come to scavenge the dead animals along the shore, to hunt the cranes in the winter, and to see if the water is drinkable.
Even a bobcat visited the playa. After it left its print, an insect with a larval form that lives in the salty soil tilled up the soil into a little ball.
When standing on a spit of land sticking out into the water, and looking back to the shore, a person can see a number of species of plants adapted to the soil, and the "loess" of the windblown aeolian deposits shaped into hills.
Pickleweed is one of the few plants that can grow in the saltiest of soils.
A close-up of pickle weed shows its succulent form. Its cellular liquid is in gel form, so transpiration and evaporation are slowed.
Along some playas the edges are pickleweed flats.
Alkali sacaton is the first grass seen when leaving the bare floor of the playa. This clump was once much bigger, and the old culms shape remain in spires of cemented alkaline soil.
Sea purslane, a perennial, only grows on alkaline soil. This young plant seems stressed as evidenced by the yellowed leaves.
Sometimes sea purslane will form mats more than a foot across.
Sea blite is another habitat specific plant only found in alkaline soils. This one has either a disease or is affected by a bacterial gall, as shown by the white misshapen growth.
In the loess soils on the east and northeast side of salt playas this perennial sundrops is often found, but it can be found in other habitats as well.
Jimmyweed is another soil often found in alkaline soils. It is a shrub that can get four feet tall and four feet across. A bee fly is nectaring on the blossom.
Around some salt playas saltbush becomes a dominant plant. The seeds are beginning to turn golden. Yuccas can often live in somewhat alkaline soil as well.
Salt cedars are often found along the shores of salt playas. This non-native plant was introduced as an ornamental plant in the 1890s in California, and later in the southwestern United States as an erosion control plant. It spread throughout the region along all the rivers and water courses, and diminished the water flow in the streams by as much as 50 percent.
The four-winged seed of the saltbush on this plant had not begun to turn golden, but the white fuzzy balls are galls created by an insect.
A wide angle view of the shore shows pickleweed in the foreground, alkali sacaton on the slope, and bluff daisy blooming yellow a little higher. Beyond is an erosional cliff cutting in the hillside covered with more alkali sacaton.
Bluff daisy is another plant that is most commonly found in alkaline loess soils.
In the erosional cliff an animal dug a den maybe the coyote or bobcat who left its tracks in the mud of the playa bottom.
Erosional channels in the cliffs were sometimes enlarged by Indians and buffalo hunters. Such "caves" gave Yellowhouse playa (northwest of Lubbock) its name - from a distance a number of such caves looked like a small town.
On a steeper hillside with less alkali sacaton, the bluff daisy brightened the landscape.
Even higher on the loess hillside a patch of sunflowers grew along a depression among the alkali sacaton.
White burrograss (which always grows in tight soils) is in front of the alkali sacaton, and beyond is the playa.
On the backside of the loess hill, yellow paper daisy, purple tansy aster, sunflower, and mesquite carpet the hill.
The hillside to the southwest of the playa reveals a gully cut into red dirt.