A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
975 entries
bolson
A flat-floored desert basin ringed entirely by mountains, with no outlet — water that falls on the surrounding ranges runs in toward the middle and stays there, sinking into the sediments or evaporating off a playa at the low point. Bolsons are filling rather than eroding: The floor rises over time as the ranges shed material into it. Basin-and-range country is made of them.
Etymology
American English of the 1830s and 1840s, taken from Spanish bolsón, a big purse — the augmentative of bolsa, bag, from Latin bursa and Greek byrsa, a hide, which is also the ancestor of English purse, bursar, and reimburse.
Notes
Named examples include the Hueco Bolson in Trans-Pecos Texas, the Mesilla Bolson in southern New Mexico, the Jornada del Muerto Bolson east of Las Cruces, and the Bolsón de Mapimí in Chihuahua and Durango. The deep sediments hold water that entered them thousands of years ago, and the bolson aquifers are what a great deal of the Chihuahuan Desert drinks from.