Discover the 3 Largest and Most Important Deserts in California

California is the third-largest state in the country. The state is home to a wide assortment of environments from mountainous forests to brutally hot deserts. Deserts are dry ecosystems that have little vegetation and receive fewer than 10 inches of rain per year. Today, we are going to examine three of the largest and most important deserts in California.

Discover where these deserts are located, how large they are, and why they’re significant in the region!  

3. Great Basin Desert

The Great Basin Desert is among the largest and most important deserts in California and the nation. Even though this desert is the smallest one in the Golden State, it’s actually the largest in the country as a whole. The Great Basin Desert is about 190,000 square miles in total size.

This particular desert is a cold desert created by the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges. This desert has a high elevation averaging 4,000 to 7,000 feet and extending upwards of 12,000 feet. The Great Basin Desert has hot, dry summers and brutally cold winters.

The Great Basin Desert is east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the geological feature that created this desert. However, the majority of this desert is in Nevada and western Utah. Only a sliver of this desert exists in the easternmost region of California.

Like other deserts, the Great Basin Desert is not precisely defined in its space. So, it’s hard to say exactly how much of the desert is in California. However, this desert clearly has a smaller area than the others on this list.

The flora and fauna in this region are diverse. Some of the animals that live in this area include:

• Bighorn sheep
• Mountain lions
• Bobcats
• Coyotes
• Desert kangaroo rats
• Pronghorns

These are just a few of the animals that live in this area, but many others live here as well.

2. Colorado Desert

The Colorado Desert is a northwestern subdivision of the Sonoran Desert within the southeasternmost part of California. The total size of the Sonoran Desert is about 100,000 square miles, but only about 10,800 square miles are in California. The relatively low-lying desert Colorado Desert is separated from the main body of the Sonoran Desert by the Colorado River from which it receives its name.

The majority of this desert has a low elevation, below 1,000 feet for the most part. However, some mountains in the area reach elevations of 3,000, and they can reach as high as 10,000 feet.

This desert’s climate is different than either of the other two deserts in the country. One major difference between the Colorado Desert and the Great Basin Desert is that the daytime temperatures in the former are much higher. The low elevation lends itself to higher temperatures and a lack of frost in the area.

This desert has a variety of unique flora and fauna in the region. Some of the animals that thrive in this part of the world include:

• Flat-tailed horned lizard
• Bighorn sheep
• Desert tortoise
• Red-diamond rattlesnake
• Arroyo toad
• Desert pupfish

Many other plants and animals inhabit this region, thriving in an otherwise inhospitable part of the country.

1. Mojave Desert

The Mojave Desert is the leader of the largest and most important deserts in California. This desert is south of the Great Basin Desert and north of the Colorado Desert. The Mojave Desert is the smallest of the three deserts on this list, but it’s the largest in California. The overall size of the Mojave Desert is about 30,000 to 45,000 square miles, and most of that is in the Golden State.  

Many parts of the Mojave Desert have a high elevation between 2,000 and 4,000 feet. However, this desert is also home to the hottest place in the United States, Death Valley. Death Valley holds the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded in the country, 134 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913. Also, this desert has the lowest elevation of anywhere in the country in the Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level.

Parts of the desert are highly populated, like Las Vegas in Nevada. Moreover, the region has several national parks and popular tourist attractions. Death Valley has recently garnered a fair amount of attention from people who wanted to witness the area breaking temperature records. So far, the record from 1913 stands.

Like the other deserts on this list, many different animals live in this desert. Some of the creatures that one might encounter are:

• Black-tailed jackrabbit
• Greater roadrunner
• Western diamondback rattlesnake
• Desert kangaroo rat
• Desert whitetail
• Western banded gecko

Many other animals live in the region, though.

This list of the largest and most important deserts in California includes three out of the four deserts in this part of the country. They’re each very different in size and climate, but they’re all interesting, unique, and important ecosystems.

Summary of the Largest and Most Important Deserts in California

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