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Photo: Goddard Space Flight Center’s Landsat Team and the Australian ground receiving station teams. · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Endorheic lake in South Australia
Lake Eyre, officially known as Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, is an endorheic lake in the east-central part of the Far North region of South Australia, some 700 km (430 mi) north of Adelaide. It is the largest ephemeral endorheic lake on the Australian continent, covering over 9,000 km2 (3,500 sq mi). The shallow lake is the depocentre of the vast endorheic Lake Eyre basin, and contains the lowest natural point in Australia, at approximately 15 m (49 ft) below sea level. The lake is most often empty, filling mostly when flooding occurs upstream in Channel Country, but almost always partially. On the rare occasions that it fills completely, it is the largest lake in Australia, covering an area of up to 9,500 km2 (3,668 sq mi). When the lake is full, it has the same salinity as seawater, but becomes hypersaline as the lake dries up and the water evaporates. To the north of the lake is the Simpson Desert.