The Death Valley expedition 1891, with Descriptions of New Species"". The Death Valley expedition The Death Valley expedition was an 1891 expedition to discover the geographic distributions of plants (phytogeography) and animals in California's Death Valley. It was the first of a series of expeditions funded by an 1890 act of the United States Congress. The expedition included biologists, naturalists, botanists, and zoologists. They produced valuable reports of historic significance in several fields, including ""Botany of the Death Valley Expedition"", "“The Death Valley Expedition: A Biological Survey of Parts of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah”", and ""Annotated List of the Reptiles and Batrachians Collected
Death Valley shallow lake, but the extreme heat and aridity immediately began evaporating the ephemeral lake. The pair of images (seen at right) from NASA's Landsat 5 satellite documents the short history of Death Valley's Lake Badwater: formed in February 2005 (top) and evaporated by February 2007 (bottom). In 2005, a big pool of greenish water stretched most of the way across the valley floor. By May 2005 the valley floor had resumed its more familiar role as Badwater Basin, a salt-coated salt flats. In time, this freshly dissolved and recrystallized salt will darken. The western margin of Death Valley is traced