Playa Lakes: Prairie Wetlands of the Southern High Plains

Abstract

Slayas are shallow, circular basins dotting the surface of plains and desert landscapes. Whereas playa basins occur elsewhere in the world (e.g., in the Sahara and Mohave deserts), they are nowhere as numerous or dense as on the Southern High Plains (SHP) or Llano Estacado, an 82,000-square-kilometer tableland south of the Canadian River in Texas and New Mexico (Figure 1). Playas average 6.3 ha in size; 19,340 of the basins occur in Texas and 2,460 in New Mexico, with another 3,590 playas found in plains states north of the Canadian River (Guthery and Bryant 1982). Most playas on the SHP may have formed during the Pleistocene from the deflating erosion of prairie winds, although theories vary (Osterkamp and Wood 1987). Popular notions