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Lop Nur

China / Xinjiang / Hami /
 dry lake  Add category
Located in the northeast of Ruoqiang County, Lop Nur is about 780 meters (2,560 feet) above sea level and covers an area of about 3,000 square kilometers (1,160 square miles). Once it was the second largest inland lake in China and an important station on the Silk Road. Due to its geological features, Lop Nur has had many names over the centuries - Salt Lake, Puchang Sea and Peacock Sea among them. Since the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), it has been called Lop Nur. In Uygur, 'Lop' means a place having a vast expanse of water. In Mongolian, 'Nur' refers to a lake. 'Lop' and 'Nur' together means a vast lake. However, it dried up in 1972 because of excessive human economic activities in the area.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lop_Nur
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   40°8'33"N   90°30'30"E

Comments

  • Alim (guest)
    Not a nonsense. This WAS a big lake that once supported a rich civilization. Thanks to the humans, there is nothing there now. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lop_Nur
  • flywhc (guest)
    It becomes desert because Continental drift raised the mountain Himalya, blocking wet air from Indian Ocean. There is no water since early 1900's, earlier than industrialization of china and nuclear test.
  • Aldi1
    Read Sven Hedins books on the "migrating lake". Sand and soil transported by water after some time blocks the exit and water finds another way.
  • Art (guest)
    The Tarim Basin is a large endorheic basin occupying an area of more than 400,000 km². It is located in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China's far west. Its northern boundary is the Tian Shan mountain range and its southern is the Kunlun Mountains on the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The Taklamakan Desert dominates much of the basin. The area is sparsely settled by the Uyghurs, other Turkic peoples and Tajiks. Geology The Tarim Basin is the remains of an ancient microcontinent that amalgamated to the growing Eurasian continent during the Carboniferous to Permian. At present, deformation around the margins of the basin is resulting in the microcontinental crust to be underthrust beneath the Tien Shan to the north, and the Kunlun Shan to the south. The Tarim Basin is believed to contain large reserves of petroleum and natural gas, with methane comprising over 70 percent of the natural gas reserve, up to 9.2 bb.[1] A thick succession of Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic rocks occupy the central parts of the basin, locally exceeding thicknesses of 15 km. The source rocks of oil and gas tend to be Permian mudstones. Below this level is a complex Precambrian basement believed to be the remnants of the original Tarim microplate, which accrued to the growing Eurasian continent in Carboniferous time. The snow on K2, the second highest mountain in the world, flows into glaciers which move down the valleys to melt. The melted water forms rivers which flow down the mountains and into the Tarim Basin, never reaching the sea. Surrounded by desert, some rivers feed the oases where the water is used for irrigation while others flow to salt lakes and marshes. History Tarim Basin in the 3rd centuryThe Silk Road, a series of trade routes through regions of Asia, splits into two routes: the North Silk Road along the northern edge[2] and another along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the basin. A middle route was deserted in the sixth century. The southern trackway includes the oasis towns of Yarkand, Niya, Pishan, Marin and Khotan. The key oasis towns along the northern route are Aksu, Korla, Turfan, Gaochang and Loulan. Other key towns include Kashgar in the South-West, Kuqa in the North, and Dunhuang in the East. Formerly the Tocharian languages were spoken in the Tarim Basin. They were the easternmost of the Indo-European languages. The Chinese name "Yuezhi" (Chinese 月氏; Wade-Giles: Yüeh-Chih) denoted an ancient Central Asian people settled in modern eastern Tarim Basin, who, vanquished by the Xiongnu, later migrated southward in order to form the Kushan Empire, which was centred on Afghanistan/Pakistan, but also extended into northern India. The Han Chinese managed to take control of the Tarim Basin from the Xiongnu at the end of the 1st century under the leadership of general Ban Chao (32 - 102). The powerful Kushans expanded back into the Tarim Basin in the 1st-2nd centuries AD, where they established a kingdom in Kashgar and competed for control of the area with nomads and Chinese forces. They introduced the Brahmi script, the Indian Prakrit language for administration, and Buddhism, playing a central role in the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism to Eastern Asia. Lop Nur, a saline marshy depression at the east end of the Tarim Basin, is a nuclear test site for the People's Republic of China. The Tarim River empties into the Lop Nur.
  • Art (guest)
    Lop Nur (Chinese: 罗布泊; Pinyin: Luóbù Pō; also Lake Lop, Lop Nuur) is a group of small, now seasonal salt lake sand marshes between the Taklamakan and Kuruktag deserts in the southeastern portion of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China. The lake system into which the Tarim River empties is the last remnant of the historical post-glacial Tarim Lake, which once covered more than 10,000 square kilometers in the Tarim Basin. Lop Nur is hydrologically endorheic— it is landbound and there is no outlet. Though it was determined to be a single salt lake by ancient Chinese geographers, the lake system has largely dried up from its 1928 measured area of 3,100 km², and the desert has spread by windblown sandy loess. This has shifted the lake system 30 to 40 km westwards during the past 40 years.[1] A partial cause for the destabilization of the desert has been the cutting of poplars and willows for firewood; in response, a reserve was established in 2003 to preserve 3,520 square kilometres of poplar.[2]
  • kencummings
    The area has abundant reserves of potassium salts needed for fertilizers and many industrial uses.
  • DirkWillemsen
    Polygon is not correct
  • JeffersonClark
    Any polygon would be technically incorrect. The lake is basically gone. The shore has receded for centuries. This approximation serves its purpose.
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This article was last modified 12 years ago