A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
salina
A salina is a salt lake or a salt flat, a basin with no outlet where water arrives, evaporates, and leaves its dissolved minerals behind. Over long periods, the crust builds to considerable thickness. The word is used through Spanish-speaking country and has been taken into English for the same feature in the Americas, alongside playa, salt pan, and salar.
Etymology
The word is Spanish and Latin for a salt works or a salt pit, built on the word for salt, and it named the works before it named the natural feature. The same root runs through a great deal of English: saline, salary, from the allowance Roman soldiers received in connection with salt, salad, from salted greens, and sauce.
Notes
Salinas are where a great deal of the world’s lithium is, dissolved in brine beneath the crust, and they are also among the most productive bird habitats in dry country, since the brine supports brine shrimp and brine flies in quantities that draw flamingos, avocets, and phalaropes in the tens of thousands. Bolson and altiplano entries describe the basins they sit in.