Death Valley National Park
The hottest and driest of the national parks in the USA
Death Valley National Park is a national park in the California and Nevada. It is located east of the Sierra Nevada. The park contains a diverse desert environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons, and mountains. It is the largest national park in the lower 48 states and has been declared an International Biosphere Reserve.
There are two major valleys in the park, Death Valley and Panamint Valley. Both of these valleys were formed within the last few million years. These and adjacent valleys follow the general trend of Basin and Range topography with one modification: there are parallel strike-slip faults that perpendicularly bound the central extent of Death Valley.
Death Valley National Park
Climate
Death Valley has a subtropical, hot desert climate, with long, extremely hot summers and short, warm or mild winters as well as little rainfall. As a general rule, lower altitudes tend to have higher temperatures.
The valley is surrounded by mountains, while its surface is mostly flat and devoid of plants, and so much of the sun's heat can reach the ground, absorbed by soil and rock. Death Valley holds temperature records because it has an unusually high number of factors that lead to high atmospheric temperatures.
Biota
In spite of the overwhelming heat and sparse rainfall, Death Valley exhibits surprising biodiversity. Wildflowers, watered by snowmelt, carpet the desert floor each spring, continuing into June. Bighorn sheep, red-tailed hawks, and wild burros may be seen. Death Valley has over 600 springs and ponds. Darwin Falls, on the western edge of Death Valley Monument, falls a hundred feet into a large pond surrounded by willows and cottonwood trees. Over 80 species of birds have been spotted around the pond
Death Valley Exposed: Wildflowers - February 2016