Racetrack Playa is a plain without vegetation of a dry located above the northwestern side of Death Valley, in Death Valley National Park (Inyo County, CA, USA). Although “playa” is the Spanish word for beach, it is also used in English to refer to a dry lake. Racetrack Playa occupies an area of 4.5 km (north-south) by 2 km (east-west) which is 1,130 m above sea level between the Cottonwood Mountains and Last Chance Range. The surface is extremely flat and dry for most of the year, when the surface is covered with small hexagonal mud curls, although floods partially during the rainy season forming a shallow lake that evaporates quickly. In winter it forms a relatively thick layer of ice.

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Soil structure is the result of the spatial arrangement of the solid soil particles and their associated pore space. Aggregation mainly depends on the soil composition and texture, but is also strongly influenced by other factors such as biological activity, climate, geomorphic processes or the action of fire. Structure is a typical morphological soil property, which allows differentiating soil of geological material. Because of its importance, structure is a property commonly described in soil studies.
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