Cracked Clay Salt Flat

Cracked Clay Salt Flat is an original illustration set in Central Altiplano, Bolivia. It lies in the tropics, where the climate is cold desert — arid, with freezing winters.

Large curling polygonal clay plates are separated by deep dark cracks. White salt powder has collected along some crack edges. A shallow abandoned brine puddle sits turquoise in a hollow, and tiny yellow cushion plants cling to the pan's edge. Volcanoes stand distant under thin bright air.

Why do drying mud plates curl upward at the edges?

Clay shrinks as it dries and splits into polygons; the plates curl upward because the surface dries first. Salt gathering in the cracks means the water that filled this pan had nowhere to drain and evaporated in place. Cushion plants — dense, low, ground-hugging — are a high-altitude growth form built against cold and wind, and they place this basin far above the tree line.

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