| Lake Harris | |
| Pushpin Map: | Australia South Australia |
| Pushpin Label Position: | top |
| Pushpin Map Caption: | Location in South Australia |
| Location: | South Australia |
| Coords: | -31.07°N 135.24°W |
| Type: | Endorheic, salt lake |
| Outflow: | evaporation[1] |
| Basin Countries: | Australia |
| Designation: | Lake Gairdner National Park[2] |
| Length: | 20miles[3] |
| Width: | 10miles |
| Area: | [4] |
| Islands: | “a number of islands”[5] |
Lake Harris is an endorheic salt lake in the Australian state of South Australia to the north of the Eyre Peninsula located about northwest of the state capital of Adelaide within the gazetted localities of Lake Harris and Wilgena.[3] [6] Lake Harris was named by the Government of South Australia after the surveyor, Charles Hope Harris, who discovered and mapped it in 1874.[7]
Lake Harris is aligned in a north-easterly direction with an overall length of about 20miles and a maximum width of about 10miles.[3] [8] It extent includes “a number of Islands” described as being formed from “Quaternary deposits with extensive sand cover.”[5] Its bed consists of “gypsiferous muds, clays and silts with some gypsum crystals” topped with a salt crust of thickness in the range of to, although parts of the lake have a surface with “no identifiable salt crust”.[5] The lake bed contains a dune field of gypsum sands which vegetated with both “low samphire shrubland and tall shrubland with a chenopod shrub understorey.”[9]
Lake Harris along with the nearby lakes of Everard and Gairdner, form the extent of the protected area known as the Lake Gairdner National Park.[1]