A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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bajada
A broad, gently sloping apron of alluvium and debris fanning out from the base of a mountain range into a desert basin, formed by the merging of multiple alluvial fans. The bajada is the transition zone between mountain and flat — neither steep nor level, built grain by grain from the sediment the mountains shed. Desert cities from Tucson to Tehran are built on bajadas.
Etymology
From Spanish bajada, “descent, slope,” from bajar (“to go down, descend”), ultimately from Latin bassus (“low”). The name describes the landform’s action — the long downward grade where sediment washes off the mountains and spreads into a merged apron of fans.