Alkali Lake is a playa

Sink (geography)

A geographic sink is a depression within an endorheic basin where water collects with no visible outlet. Instead of discharging, the collected water is lost due to evaporation and/or penetration...

 in Lake County, Oregon

Lake County, Oregon

Lake County is a county in the high desert south central region of the U.S. state of Oregon, so named for the many lakes found within its boundaries, including Lake Abert, Hart Lake Reservoir, and Goose Lake. While Lake is among Oregon's largest counties, it is sparsely populated with 7,895...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It is in the Alkali Subbasin of the Summer Lake Basin

Summer Lake (Oregon)

Summer Lake is a large, shallow, alkali lake in Lake County, Oregon, United States. It is approximately long and wide, and is located five miles south of the small, unincorporated community of Summer Lake, Oregon. The lake was named by explorer John C. Fremont on his expedition into Central...

 watershed

Drainage basin

A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...

 in southeastern Oregon, located 26 miles east of Christmas Valley, Oregon

Christmas Valley, Oregon

Christmas Valley is an unincorporated community in Lake County, Oregon, United States. The community was named after nearby dry Christmas Lake, east of the present townsite and the site of the former Lake post office, which ran from 1906 until 1943. Real estate development around a planned...

, northeast of Lake Abert

Lake Abert

Lake Abert is a large, shallow, alkali lake in Lake County, Oregon, United States. It is approximately long and wide at its widest point. It is located northwest of the small, unincorporated community of Valley Falls, Oregon. The lake was named in honor of Colonel John James Abert by explorer...

, to the immediate west of Abert Rim

Abert Rim

Abert Rim in Lake County, Oregon is one of the highest fault scarps in the United States. It rises 760 meters above the valley floor, finishing with an 250-meter sheer-sided basalt cap. It was formed during the Miocene epoch. At that time basaltic flood lavas covered much of eastern Oregon...

 and Highway 395.

Alkali Lake is thought to have reached a prehistoric maximum depth of 270.7 feet (82.5 meters) and covered about 1448.4 square miles (2,331 square kilometers). Since then, its water level has varied, with a drying trend.
Notable features include dissolved alkaline salts averaging 10% of total brine weight in its seasonal waters and a nearby chemical disaster, Alkali Lake Chemical Waste Dump

Alkali Lake Chemical Waste Dump

Alkali Lake Chemical Waste Dump is a hazardous waste disposal site near the southwest edge of Alkali Lake, a seasonally dry playa in Lake County, Oregon. It is in the Summer Lake watershed. The site has been the focus of Oregon Department of Environmental Quality efforts to remediate a complex mix...

.

Plants

Plants known to occur in the dunes immediately north of the lake include:

• Buckwheat Family
  • Broom Buckwheat
    Eriogonum vimineum
    Eriogonum vimineum is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common name wickerstem buckwheat. It is native to the Northwestern United States, California, and Nevada where it is common to abundant in many types of habitat, including the Sierra Nevada.-Description:Eriogonum vimineum is a slender...
    
    
• Goosefoot Family
  • Spiny Hopsage
• Mustard Family
  • Stanleya
    Stanleya (plant)
    Stanleya is a genus of six species of plants in the mustard family known commonly as prince's plumes. These are herbs or erect shrubs which bear dense, plumelike inflorescences of white to bright yellow flowers with long stamens. Stanleya species are native to the western United States...
    
     or Guillenia
    Guillenia
    Guillenia is a small genus of mustard plants containing three species. These are sometimes treated as members of the jewelflower genus Caulanthus. They are native to western North America.Species:*Guillenia flavescens - yellow mustard...
    
     sp.
• Evening-primrose family
  • Desert Evening-primrose
    Oenothera caespitosa
    Oenothera caespitosa, known commonly as tufted evening primrose and fragrant evening primrose, is a perennial plant of the genus Oenothera native to much of western and central North America...
    
    
• Parsley Family
  • Rhysopterus plurijugus
• Phlox Family
  Polemoniaceae
  Polemoniaceae are a family of about 25 genera with 270-400 species of annual and perennial plants, native to the Northern Hemisphere and South America, with the center of diversity in western North America, especially in California.Only one genus is found in Europe, and two in Asia, where they...
  
  
  • Great Basin Gilia
• Borage Family
  • Matted Cryptantha
    Cryptantha circumscissa
    Cryptantha circumscissa is a species of flowering plant in the borage family known by the common name cushion cryptantha. It is native to western North America from Washington to Baja California to Colorado, where it grows in many types of habitat from mountains to desert. It is also known from...
    
    
• Sunflower Family
  Asteraceae
  The Asteraceae or Compositae , is an exceedingly large and widespread family of vascular plants. The group has more than 22,750 currently accepted species, spread across 1620 genera and 12 subfamilies...
  
  
  • Desert Pincushion
    Chaenactis stevioides
    Chaenactis stevioides, with the common names Esteve's pincushion and Desert pincushion, is a species of flowering plant in the daisy family.-Distribution:...
    
    
  • Gray Rabbitbrush
  • Showy Townsend Daisy

Works cited

• McArthur, Lewis A. Oregon Geographic Names, Fourth ed. 1974. Edwards Brothers. Ann Arbor, MI
• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon Field Office