Explanation:

Sometimes water collected in a depression or a desert basin does not completely disappear by evaporation or seepage, and a temporary lake is formed. Such lakes contain a high percentage of salts, because of high evaporation, and are glistening white when they dry up. The lakes and the alluvial plains formed by them are called Playas.

Playa, also called pan, flat, or dry lake, flat-bottom depression found in interior desert basins and adjacent to coasts within arid and semiarid regions, periodically covered by water that slowly filtrates into the groundwater system or evaporates into the atmosphere, causing the deposition of salt, sand, and mud along the bottom and around the edges of the depression. Playas are among the flattest known landforms. It is the process of inundation that develops and maintains the near-perfect flatness so characteristic of these arid-region landforms. Playas affected by occasional surface floods are usually dry. Their surfaces consist of silt and clay deposited by the floodwaters that enter closed basins during the occasional flow events. Salts develop as ponded floodwater in the center of such a basin gradually evaporates. Water also can be supplied to closed basins by groundwater flow. In basins dominated by groundwater inputs, sediment influxes are minimized, and saline crusts dominate. Moist areas may persist as groundwater flows to the lowest portion of playas. Very large playas may exhibit dry, sediment-dominated sections and moist, salt-dominated sections.