Qualla: Laguna Salada

Laguna Salada: Introduction

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sixty kilometers long, seventeen kilometers wide, and ten meters below sea level, Laguna Salada is one of the great empty spaces of the Sonoran Desert. Thirty kilometers southwest of Mexicali in Baja California, it occupies a tectonic graben — a block of crust dropped between parallel faults — that is geologically connected to the same fault system that underlies much of California. In wet years, water occasionally floods the basin. In the usual dry years, the lakebed stretches flat and pale under the desert sky, vast enough to use for aviation experiments, large enough to absorb earthquakes, and remote enough that a Boeing 727 was once deliberately crashed into it for a television program.

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Laguna Salada: A Hole in the Desert Floor

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Laguna Salada's below-sea-level position results from the same tectonic dynamics that created the Salton Sea depression to the north and the Gulf of California to the south. The region sits along the boundary between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates, where extension...

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Laguna Salada: The 2010 Earthquake

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On April 4, 2010, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake centered near Laguna Salada devastated portions of Baja California and shook communities as far north as Los Angeles. The earthquake was one of the strongest to strike the region in decades, causing significant damage in Mexicali and t...

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Laguna Salada: Crashing a 727 for Science

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2012, Discovery Channel organized one of the more unusual experiments ever conducted in a remote desert location: the deliberate crash of a Boeing 727. The network and a team of researchers wanted to test aircraft survivability and cabin design by controlling the crash conditi...

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Laguna Salada: Sonoran Desert Extreme

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The climate of Laguna Salada represents the Sonoran Desert at its most demanding: summer temperatures that exceed those of even the surrounding region, minimal rainfall, and the heat-amplifying effect of a below-sea-level basin that traps and concentrates warmth. The Chinese labo...

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Laguna Salada: Between Two Countries

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Laguna Salada sits entirely within Baja California, Mexico, but its geological and ecological connections cross the border. The fault system that created it extends north into California; the Colorado River that occasionally floods it originates in the American Rockies; the commu...

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