the.com/saltpan
a shallow grave for water that leaves its bones behind as salt
means A shallow natural or artificial basin where water evaporates to leave a crust of salt, whether a coastal pond worked for harvest or a dried-up desert flat.
from A plain English compound of "salt" and "pan" — both old Germanic words. "Salt" runs back through Old English "sealt" to a Proto-Germanic root (a cousin of Latin "sal" and the whole family that gives us "salary" and "sauce"). "Pan" meant a broad shallow vessel, and the leap from cooking pan to a wide flat hollow in the land was an easy one — the earth itself becomes the dish in which water is boiled down by the sun.
- flamingo lure
- pink algae here turn flamingos their famous color
- mirror trick
- thin water films create Earth's largest natural mirrors
- Bolivia's giant
- Salar de Uyuni spans over 4,000 square miles
- deadly crusts
- thin salt can hide deep brine pools beneath
- ancient currency
- salt harvested here once paid Roman soldiers
atacama salt flat — world's largest salt flat at 40,600 sq km in northern chile and argentina
bonneville salt flats — 12,000 acres of white salt crust in utah, used for land speed records since 1914
laguna cejar — hypersaline lagoon in chile's atacama desert, 40% salt concentration allowing floating