The Hoya of Baza is a valley in the northern part of the province

Provinces of Spain

Spain and its autonomous communities are divided into fifty provinces .In other languages of Spain:*Catalan/Valencian , sing. província.*Galician , sing. provincia.*Basque |Galicia]] — are not also the capitals of provinces...

 of Granada

Granada (province)

Granada is a province of southern Spain, in the eastern part of the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is bordered by the provinces of Albacete, Murcia, Almería, Jaén, Córdoba, Málaga, and the Mediterranean Sea . Its capital city is also called Granada.The province covers an area of 12,635 km²...

, Andalusia

Andalusia

Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...

, Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. It is one of the series of valleys forming the Surco Intrabético

Surco Intrabético

The Surco Intrabético is a discontinuous series of valleys in the Baetic Cordillera of Andalusia, Spain, which separate the Cordillera Penibética to its south from the Cordillera Subbética to its north. These valleys run more or less parallel to the Mediterranean coast...

.

It formed during the Alpine orogeny

Alpine orogeny

The Alpine orogeny is an orogenic phase in the Late Mesozoic and Tertiary that formed the mountain ranges of the Alpide belt...

 of the Tertiary

Tertiary

The Tertiary is a deprecated term for a geologic period 65 million to 2.6 million years ago. The Tertiary covered the time span between the superseded Secondary period and the Quaternary...

 Era. Initially, it was a large lake that filled in with Tertiary and Quaternary

Quaternary

The Quaternary Period is the most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the ICS. It follows the Neogene Period, spanning 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present...

 materials. It was originally part of the Mediterranean

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

 basin

Basin

Basin may refer to:* Basin , a poem about Charlemagne's childhood* basin , the area of a drydock which can be flooded and drained* basin of attraction , an area of a nonlinear system with an attractor...

, connected to the sea by the corridor of the Almanzora

Almanzora

Almanzora is a small city in the province of Almería, Andalusia, Spain. Its name, derives from the Arabic al-Mansura , "place of victory", and has been passed on from the city to which is shared with a river and to the surrounding Comarca of Almanzora.The area has been settled at least since Roman...

 River. Later, the action of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates

Tectonic Plates

Tectonic Plates is a 1992 independent Canadian film directed by Peter Mettler. Mettler also wrote the screenplay based on the play by Robert Lepage. The film stars Marie Gignac, Céline Bonnier and Robert Lepage.-Plot summary:...

 raised it upward to become an endorheic lake (that is, one without an outlet) 1000 metres (3,280.8 ft) above sea level.

The term "hoya" literally means "trough" and refers to the boxed in character of the area.

The Hoya of Baza is surrounded by an imposing belt of mountain ranges, many of them over 2000 metres (6,561.7 ft) in altitude: the Sierra de Baza

Sierra de Baza

Sierra de Baza is a mountain range near the city of Baza in the Granada province in Spain. It is named after the town of Baza and its highest point is the 2,269 m high Calar de Santa Bárbara....

, Sierra de la Sagra, Sierra de Cazorla

Sierra de Cazorla

Sierra de Cazorla is a mountain range of the Prebaetic System in the Jaén Province in Spain. It is named after the ancient town of Villa de Segura and it gives its name to the Segura River...

, Sierra de Orce, and Sierra de las Estancias. The Cerro Jabalcón separates the Hoya of Baza from the Hoya of Guadix

Hoya of Guadix

The Hoya of Guadix is a natural plain in the northern part of the province of Granada, Andalusia, Spain. It covers some , and is formed by the basins of the Rivers Fardes and Guadix. It is surrounded by the heights of the Sierra Nevada to the south, the Sierra de Baza to the east, the Sierra...

.

The Hoya is generally relatively flat, but cut by a dense network of rivers that form a maze of gullies

Gully

A gully is a landform created by running water, eroding sharply into soil, typically on a hillside. Gullies resemble large ditches or small valleys, but are metres to tens of metres in depth and width...

 and ravine

Ravine

A ravine is a landform narrower than a canyon and is often the product of streamcutting erosion. Ravines are typically classified as larger in scale than gullies, although smaller than valleys. A ravine is generally a fluvial slope landform of relatively steep sides, on the order of twenty to...

s known as badlands.

Apart from the fertile plains and other places that have been worked, the territory is steppe

Steppe

In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...

, bearing only shrubbery typical of cold regions.