Best Erosion

Valle de la Luna is an arid landscape in the Cordillera de la Sal near San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile. Wind and occasional water erosion have shaped its salt, clay, and rock deposits into ridges, ravines, caves, and dune fields, while exposed mineral salts create pale crusts across parts of...

Talampaya National Park is a protected area in La Rioja Province, Argentina, characterized by red sandstone cliffs, broad canyons, and dry desert terrain. Together with neighboring Ischigualasto Provincial Park, it forms the Ischigualasto-Talampaya UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2000. Its...

Valle de la Luna is a popular name for the eroded landscape of Ischigualasto Provincial Park in San Juan Province, Argentina. Its exposed gray and ochre sedimentary formations, isolated rock shapes, and sparse vegetation produce the moonlike appearance reflected in the name. The park forms part of t...

The Turkana Basin is a geological and drainage basin centered on Lake Turkana and extending across northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia within the East African Rift system. Its exposed sedimentary deposits preserve fossils and archaeological evidence spanning major stages of primate and human evolut...

The Painted Hills are one of the three units of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in central Oregon. Their bands of red, gold, black, and gray record changing environmental conditions in ancient floodplain deposits, with the visible colors produced by different minerals and degrees of soil deve...

The Danakil Depression is a low-lying desert region in the Afar area of northeastern Ethiopia, near the junction of several tectonic plates. Parts of it lie more than 100 meters below sea level, and the region is marked by extreme heat, salt flats, volcanic activity, and hydrothermal fields colored...

The Little Missouri Badlands are an eroded landscape surrounding the Little Missouri River in western North Dakota. Layered sedimentary rocks have been shaped into steep gullies, ridges, buttes, and exposed bands of differently colored material, while grasslands occupy many of the gentler surfaces....

Las Médulas is a cultural landscape in León, Spain, shaped by large-scale Roman gold mining. Roman engineers used water channels and hydraulic techniques, including ruina montium, to fracture and wash away parts of the terrain, leaving red pinnacles amid chestnut woodland. The archaeological landsca...

Palo Duro Canyon is an extensive canyon system in the Texas Panhandle, southeast of Amarillo, carved primarily by the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River. Its multicolored sedimentary layers, steep walls, mesas, and hoodoos are protected in Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Roads, trails, campsites, a...

Kerlingarfjöll is a volcanic mountain range in Iceland's central highlands, reached from the Kjölur highland route. Its rhyolite mountains display red, yellow, and brown tones, while the Hveradalir area contains steaming vents, hot ground, and other geothermal features. The remote terrain attracts h...

The White Desert is a chalk landscape in Egypt's Western Desert near the Farafra Oasis. Windblown sand has eroded the pale rock into isolated towers, pinnacles, and rounded forms that contrast with the surrounding desert floor. It lies within White Desert National Park and is visited for its unusual...

Ihlara Valley is a gorge in Aksaray Province within Turkey's Cappadocia region, extending for roughly 14 kilometers through volcanic rock. The Melendiz River runs along its floor, where vegetation contrasts with the surrounding plateau. The valley contains numerous rock-cut dwellings and more than 1...

Colorado National Monument is a protected landscape established in 1911 near Grand Junction and Fruita in western Colorado. It preserves deeply cut canyons, red sandstone monoliths, cliffs, and mesas along the northeastern edge of the Uncompahgre Plateau. The National Park Service manages the monume...

Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument is a 377,000-acre federal monument in north-central Montana established by President Clinton in 2001, protecting badlands, wildlife, and one of the last free-flowing stretches of the Missouri River.

Quebrada de las Conchas, also called Quebrada de Cafayate, is a gorge in Salta Province in northwestern Argentina. Water and wind erosion have exposed and shaped layers of red sandstone and other sedimentary rocks along the route between Salta and Cafayate. Named formations include El Anfiteatro, or...

Cerro de los Siete Colores, or Hill of Seven Colors, is a multicolored hill beside Purmamarca in Argentina's Jujuy Province. Its visible bands come from sedimentary layers formed under different conditions and colored by varying mineral contents, then tilted and exposed by erosion. The hill forms pa...

Bardenas Reales is a semi-arid landscape of eroded clay, gypsum, and sandstone in Navarre, Spain. Ravines, plateaus, isolated hills, and formations such as Castildetierra give much of the area a distinctive badland appearance. Protected as a natural park and designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in...

Isalo National Park is a protected sandstone massif in south-central Madagascar, established in 1962. Erosion has shaped its rock into canyons, ridges, cliffs, and unusual formations, while streams and natural pools create localized areas of vegetation within a generally dry landscape. The park supp...

Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park is a large protected area in Mongolia's South Gobi region, established in 1993 and covering roughly 27,000 square kilometers. Its landscape includes desert steppe, rocky mountains, dunes, canyons, and sites containing fossils, rather than only open sandy desert. Nota...

Hormuz Island is an Iranian island in the Strait of Hormuz, near the entrance to the Persian Gulf. It is distinguished by salt formations, eroded hills, and mineral-rich soils displaying red, yellow, orange, and white colors; iron oxide gives parts of its coast and beaches a pronounced red hue. The...

Richtersveld National Park protects a rugged mountain desert in South Africa's Northern Cape, beside the Orange River and the border with Namibia. It forms part of the wider Richtersveld region, which is known for exceptional succulent diversity and the traditional pastoral culture of the Nama peopl...

Zelve Open Air Museum preserves three adjoining valleys of rock-cut dwellings, religious spaces, tunnels, and communal structures in Cappadocia, Turkey. Communities excavated the soft volcanic tuff and occupied the settlement for centuries before its remaining residents were relocated in the twentie...

The Carrizo Badlands are an expanse of deeply eroded sedimentary terrain in and around the southern portion of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California. Folded and faulted layers, dry washes, mud hills, and narrow canyons record the tectonic development of the Salton Trough. Fossil-bearing Pliocen...

Valley of the Gods is a landscape of isolated sandstone buttes, towers, and mesas in San Juan County, southeastern Utah. Weathering and erosion carved these forms from layered sedimentary rock, creating scenery often compared with nearby Monument Valley while retaining a more dispersed and undevelop...

The Bentonite Hills are rounded, banded badlands in south-central Utah, particularly associated with the landscape east of Capitol Reef National Park. Their muted blue, green, gray, red, and purple tones come from mineral-bearing bentonite and related clay-rich layers derived partly from altered vol...

The Tatacoa Desert is a semi-arid badland region in Colombia's Huila Department, near the municipality of Villavieja. Despite its common name, it is not a conventional sand desert; erosion has cut its sedimentary formations into gullies, ridges, and labyrinths, including areas of reddish and gray te...

Valle de la Luna, or Moon Valley, is an eroded landscape near La Paz, Bolivia, composed of soft sediment containing clay and gravel. Water and wind have sculpted the material into narrow gullies, sharp pinnacles, and clustered spires, producing the barren appearance behind its popular name. Marked w...

Caprock Canyons State Park and Trailway is a Texas state park in Briscoe County, where erosion has exposed multicolored layers along the Caprock Escarpment. Its canyons, cliffs, and prairie provide habitat for wildlife and contain the official Texas State Bison Herd, descended from animals associate...

Gilf Kebir is a large, remote sandstone plateau in southwestern Egypt, near the borders with Libya and Sudan in the Libyan Desert. Its cliffs, valleys, and surrounding dune fields contain archaeological sites and prehistoric rock art, including the Cave of Swimmers, documented for Europeans by Lászl...