page_title: Death Valley
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Death Valley / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: Death Valley with a tremendous display of wildflowers after an extremely wet year.
context_page_description: Death Valley is a desert valley in Eastern California, in the northern Mojave Desert, bordering the Great Basin Desert. It is one of the hottest places on Earth, along with deserts in the Middle East and the Sahara.
  Death Valley's Badwater Basin is the point of lowest elevation in North America, at 282 feet below sea level. It is 84.6 miles east-southeast of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States, with an elevation of 14,505 feet. On the afternoon of July 10, 1913, the United States Weather Bureau recorded a high temperature of 134 °F at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, which stands as the highest ambient air temperature ever recorded at the surface of the Earth. There are ongoing disputes among modern experts regarding the reliability of readings from the first half of the 20th century, including this reading and a number of other readings from around the world. Setting aside disputed readings, the highest reliably recorded temperature on Earth is also from Furnace Creek, where a reading of 130 °F was recorded in August 2020.
context_section_description: In spite of the overwhelming heat and sparse rainfall, Death Valley exhibits considerable 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. Salt Creek, a mile-long shallow depression in the center of the valley, supports Death Valley Pupfish. These isolated pupfish populations are remnants of the wetter Pleistocene climate.
  Darwin Falls, on the western edge of Death Valley Monument, falls 100 feet (30 m) into a large pond surrounded by willows and cottonwood trees. Over 80 species of birds have been spotted around the pond.
caption: Death Valley in 2005 springtime bloom
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