Great Basin in the context of "Ecoregion"

The Sierra Nevada (/siˌɛrə nɪˈvædə, -ˈvɑːd-/ see-ERR-ə nih-VA(H)D-ə) is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily in Nevada. The Sierra Nevada is part of the American Cordillera, an almost continuous chain of mountain ranges that forms the western "backbone" of the Americas.

The Sierra runs 400 mi (640 km) north-south, and its width ranges from 50 mi (80 km) to 80 mi (130 km) across east–west. Notable features include the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree in the world by volume; Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America; Mount Whitney at 14,505 ft (4,421 m), the highest point in the contiguous United States; and Yosemite Valley sculpted by glaciers from one-hundred-million-year-old granite, containing high waterfalls. The Sierra is home to three national parks, twenty-six wilderness areas, ten national forests, and two national monuments. These areas include Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks, as well as Devils Postpile National Monument.

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northeast, Idaho to the north, and Nevada to the west. In comparison to all the U.S. states and territories, Utah, with a population of just over three million, is the 13th-largest by area, the 30th-most populous, and the 11th-least densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two regions: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which includes the state capital, Salt Lake City, and is home to roughly two-thirds of the population; and Washington County in the southwest, which has approximately 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups, such as the ancient Puebloans, the Navajo, and the Ute. The first Europeans to arrive – in the mid-16th century – were the Spanish. Because of the region's challenging geography and harsh climate, it only became a peripheral part of New Spain (and later of Mexico). Even while it was Mexican territory, many of the Utah region's earliest European settlers were from the United States; notable among these were Mormons who were fleeing marginalization and persecution in the United States and arrived via the so-called Mormon Trail. In 1848, after the Mexican–American War, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what later became Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state: in 1896, after it agreed to outlaw polygamy, it was admitted as the 45th state.

Nevada (/nəˈvædə/ nə-VAD-ə; Spanish: [neˈβaða] ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It is also sometimes placed in the Mountain West and Southwestern United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, the 32nd-most populous, and the ninth-least densely populated U.S. state. Nearly three-quarters of Nevada's population live in Clark County, which contains the Las Vegas–Paradise metropolitan area, including three of the state's four largest incorporated cities. Nevada's capital is Carson City. Las Vegas is the largest city in the state. Nevada is the westernmost U.S. state without coastline and also the westernmost landlocked first-level country subdivison in the Americas.

Nevada is officially known as the "Silver State" because of the importance of silver to its history and economy. It is also known as the "Battle Born State" because it achieved statehood during the Civil War (the words "Battle Born" also appear on its state flag); due to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, the Union benefited immensely from the support of newly awarded statehood by the infusion of the monetary support of nearly $400 million in silver ore generated at the time by the Comstock Lode. It is also known as the "Sagebrush State", for the native plant of the same name; and as the "Sage-hen State". The state's name means "snowy" in Spanish, referring to Nevada's extensive number of mountain ranges capped with snow in winter, which help make Nevada among the highest US states by mean altitude. These include the Carson Range portion of the Sierra Nevada (and about 1/3 of Lake Tahoe by surface area), as well as the Toiyabe Range, Ruby Mountains, and Spring Mountains (which exemplify the sky islands of the Great Basin montane forests), in western, central, northeastern, and southern Nevada, respectively. Nevada is the driest U.S. state, both lying in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada and receiving among the highest solar irradiance of any U.S. state, and is thus largely desert and semi-arid. Nevada comprises the majority of the Great Basin, as well as a large portion of the Mojave Desert. In 2020, 80.1% of the state's land was managed by various jurisdictions of the U.S. federal government, both civilian and military.

The Black Rock Desert is a semi-arid region (in the Great Basin shrub steppe ecoregion) of lava beds and playa, or alkali flats, situated in the Black Rock Desert–High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, a silt playa 100 miles (160 km) north of Reno, Nevada, that encompasses more than 300,000 acres (120,000 ha) of land and contains more than 120 miles (200 km) of historic trails. It is in the northern Nevada section of the Great Basin with a lakebed that is a dry remnant of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan.

The Great Basin, named for the geography in which water is unable to flow out and remains in the basin, is a rugged land serrated by hundreds of mountain ranges, dried by wind and sun, with spectacular skies and scenic landscapes. The average annual precipitation (in the years 1971–2000) at Gerlach (in the extreme south-west of the desert) is 7.90 inches (200 mm).

The Comanche (/kəˈmæntʃi/), or Nʉmʉnʉʉ (Comanche: Nʉmʉnʉʉ, 'the people'), are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma.

The Comanche language is a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family. Originally, it was a Shoshoni dialect, but diverged and became a separate language. The Comanche were once part of the Shoshone people of the Great Basin.

Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. The population was 199,723 at the 2020 census, while the Salt Lake City metropolitan area has an estimated 1.3 million residents and is the 46th-largest metropolitan area in the United States. It is also part of the larger Salt Lake City–Ogden–Provo combined statistical area, an urban corridor along a 120-mile (190 km) segment of the Wasatch Front with a population of approximately 2.8 million. It is one of the principal urban centers within the Great Basin, along with Reno, Nevada.

Salt Lake City was founded in 1847 by settlers led by Brigham Young who were seeking to escape persecution they had experienced while living farther east. The Mormon pioneers, as they would come to be known, entered a semi-arid valley and immediately began building an extensive irrigation network that could feed the population and foster future growth. Salt Lake City's street grid system is based on a standard compass grid plan, with the southeast corner of Temple Square serving as the origin of the Salt Lake meridian. Owing to its proximity to the Great Salt Lake, the city was originally named Great Salt Lake City; the word "Great" was dropped from the city's name in 1868. Immigration of international members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), mining booms, and the construction of the first transcontinental railroad brought economic growth, and the city was nicknamed "The Crossroads of the West". It was traversed by the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway, in 1913. Two major cross-country freeways, I-15 and I-80, now intersect in the city. The city also has a belt route, I-215.

The Great Basin Divide in the western United States is the ridgeline that separates the Great Basin from the Pacific Ocean watershed, which completely surrounds it.

The Great Basin is the largest set of contiguous endorheic watersheds of North America, including six entire USGS watershed subregions. It contains the watersheds of several large prehistoric and still-existing lakes, most notably Lake Bonneville, Lake Lahontan, Lake Manly, and the Salton Sea. As such, it occupies most of present-day Nevada, about half of Utah, large parts of eastern California and Oregon, and small parts of Idaho, Wyoming, and Baja California. The arid climate of this area ensures that none of the major lake basins are filled to overflowing, and thus no precipitation falling into them reaches the sea.

The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range in the western United States. The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife Fund, and the Central Basin and Range ecoregion defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and United States Geological Survey. It is a temperate desert with hot, dry summers and snowy winters. The desert spans large portions of Nevada and Utah, and extends into eastern California. The desert is one of the four biologically defined deserts in North America, in addition to the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts.

Basin and range topography characterizes the desert: wide valleys bordered by parallel mountain ranges generally oriented north–south. There are more than 33 peaks within the desert with summits higher than 9,800 feet (3,000 m), but valleys in the region are also high, most with elevations above 3,900 feet (1,200 m). The biological communities of the Great Basin Desert vary according to altitude: from low salty dry lakes, up through rolling sagebrush valleys, to pinyon-juniper forests. The significant variation between valleys and peaks has created a variety of habitat niches which has in turn led to many small, isolated populations of genetically unique plant and animal species throughout the region. According to Grayson, more than 600 species of vertebrates live in the floristic Great Basin, which has a similar areal footprint to the ecoregion. Sixty-three of these species have been identified as species of conservation concern due to contracting natural habitats (for example, Centrocercus urophasianus, Vulpes macrotis, Dipodomys ordii, and Phrynosoma platyrhinos).

Lake Lahontan was a large endorheic prehistoric lake during the Pleistocene that occupied modern northwestern Nevada and extended into northeastern California and southern Oregon. The area of the former lake is a large portion of the Great Basin that borders the Sacramento River watershed to the west.

The lake was named by Clarence King during the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel. The name honors Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce de Lahontan, Baron de Lahontan, a French soldier and explorer.

The Truckee River is a river in the U.S. states of California and Nevada. The river flows northeasterly and is 121 miles (195 km) long. The Truckee is the sole outlet of Lake Tahoe and drains part of the high Sierra Nevada, emptying into Pyramid Lake in the Great Basin. Its waters are an important source of irrigation along its valley and adjacent valleys.

Washo or Washoe (/ˈwɒ.ʃoʊ/; endonym wá꞉šiw ʔítlu) is an endangered Native American language isolate spoken by the Washo on the California–Nevada border in the drainages of the Truckee and Carson Rivers, especially around Lake Tahoe. While there were only 20 elderly native speakers of Washo as of 2011, since 1994 there had been a small immersion school that has produced a number of moderately fluent younger speakers. The immersion school has since closed its doors and the language program operates through the Cultural Resource Department for the Washoe Tribe. The language remains very endangered; however, there has been a renaissance in the language revitalization movement as many of the students who attended the original immersion school have become teachers.

Ethnographic Washo speakers belonged to the Great Basin culture area and they were the only non-Numic group of that area. The language has borrowed from the neighboring Uto-Aztecan, Maiduan and Miwokan languages and is connected to both the Great Basin and Northern California sprachbunds.

The Mono (/ˈmoʊnoʊ/ MOH-noh) are a Native American people who traditionally live in the central Sierra Nevada, the Eastern Sierra (generally south of Bridgeport), the Mono Basin, and adjacent areas of the Great Basin. They are often grouped under the historical label "Northern Paiute" together with the Northern Paiute and Southern Paiute – but these three groups, although related within the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages and speak mono/Bannock, do not form a single, unique, unified group of Great Basin tribes.

Today, many of the tribal citizens and descendants of the Mono tribe inhabit the town of North Fork (thus the label "Northfork Mono") in Madera County. People of the Mono tribe are also spread across California in: the Owens River Valley; the San Joaquin Valley and foothills areas, especially Fresno County; and in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Numic is the northernmost branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It includes seven languages spoken by Native American peoples traditionally living in the Great Basin, Colorado River basin, Snake River basin, and southern Great Plains. The word "Numic" comes from the cognate word in all Numic languages for "person", which reconstructs to Proto-Numic as /*nɨmɨ/. For example, in the three Central Numic languages and the two Western Numic languages, the word for "person" is /nɨmɨ/. In Kawaiisu it is /nɨwɨ/, and in Colorado River, it is /nɨwɨ/, /nɨŋwɨ/, and /nuu/.

Shoshoni, also written as Shoshoni-Gosiute and Shoshone (/ʃoʊˈʃoʊni/ shoh-SHOH-nee; Shoshoni: soni' ta̲i̲kwappe, newe ta̲i̲kwappe or neme ta̲i̲kwappeh), is a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family, spoken in the Western United States by the Shoshone people. Shoshoni is primarily spoken in the Great Basin, in areas of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and Idaho.

The consonant inventory of Shoshoni is rather small, but a much wider range of surface forms of these phonemes appear in the spoken language. The language has six vowels, distinguished by length. Shoshoni is a strongly suffixing language, and it inflects for nominal number and case and for verbal aspect and tense using suffixes. Word order is relatively free but shows a preference toward subject-object-verb (SOV) order.

The Snake River is a major river in the interior Pacific Northwest region of the United States. About 1,080 miles (1,740 km) long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, which is the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. Beginning in Yellowstone National Park, western Wyoming, it flows across the arid Snake River Plain of southern Idaho, the rugged Hells Canyon on the borders of Idaho, Oregon and Washington, and finally the rolling Palouse Hills of southeast Washington. It joins the Columbia River just downstream from the Tri-Cities, Washington, in the southern Columbia Basin.

The river's watershed, which drains parts of six U.S. states, is situated between the Rocky Mountains to the north and east, the Great Basin to the south, and the Blue Mountains and Oregon high desert to the west. The region has a long history of volcanism; millions of years ago, Columbia River basalts covered vast areas of the western Snake River watershed, while the Snake River Plain was a product of the Yellowstone volcanic hotspot. The river was further altered by catastrophic flooding in the most recent Ice Age, which created such features as the Snake River Canyon and Shoshone Falls.

The San Gorgonio Pass, or Banning Pass, is a 2,600 ft (790 m) elevation gap on the rim of the Great Basin between the San Bernardino Mountains to the north and the San Jacinto Mountains to the south. The pass was formed by the San Andreas Fault, a major transform fault between the Pacific plate and the North American plate that is slipping at a rate of 7.2 ±2.8 mm/year. The tall mountain ranges on either side of the pass result in the pass being a transitional zone from a Mediterranean climate west of the pass, to a Desert climate east of the pass. This also makes the pass area one of the windiest places in the United States, and why it is home to the San Gorgonio Pass wind farm.

It serves as a major transportation corridor between the Greater Los Angeles region and the Coachella Valley, and ultimately into Arizona and the United States interior. Both Interstate 10, and the Union Pacific Railroad, utilize the pass. When the rail line was completed in January 1883, by the Southern Pacific Railroad, it was billed as the second U.S. transcontinental railroad.

The Inyo Mountains are a short mountain range east of the Sierra Nevada in eastern California in the United States. The range separates the Owens Valley to the west from Saline Valley to the east, extending for approximately 70 miles (110 km) south-southeast from the southern end of the White Mountains, from which they are separated by Westgard Pass, to the east of Owens Lake.

Geologically, the mountains are a fault block range in the Basin and Range Province, at the western end of the Great Basin. They are considered to be among the most important and best-known Late Proterozoic to Cambrian sections in the United States.