Badlands

Badlands are eroded landscapes such as the Painted Desert, where summer thunderstorms and winter snowmelt carve shale and sandstone into mazes of sharp ridges, steep hillsides, and deep V-shaped gullies. Practically waterless and supporting few plants, they exist only in dry regions with sparse vegetation, where soft sediments unprotected by plants or harder caprock are easily stripped away by infrequent rains. The remaining many-colored hills, their colors derived from chemicals that formed their rock, almost appear to be melting. Badlands are found throughout the world, including in the United States at Badlands National Park in South Dakota, Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, Death Valley National Monument in California, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. Worldwide, badlands represent a wide range in geologic time, and those in Pakistan from the Miocene Epoch are millions of years younger than those in the Painted Desert.

Arizona · United States