Takla Makan Desert

Takla Makan Desert
Chinese Taklimakan Shamo or T'a-k'o-la-ma-kan Sha-mo

Desert, forming the greater part of the Tarim River basin, west-central China.

One of the world's largest sandy wastes, it is about 600 mi (965 km) across, with an area of 105,000 sq mi (272,000 sq km). It is flanked by high mountain ranges, including the Kunlun Mountains, whose rivers penetrate the desert 60–120 mi (100–200 km) before drying up in its sands. Its wind-blown sand cover is as much as 1,000 ft (300 m) thick and has formed such features as pyramidal dunes that can reach heights of 1,000 ft (300 m).

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Introduction
Chinese (Pinyin)  Taklimakan Shamo  or  (Wade-Giles romanization)  T'a-k'o-la-ma-kan Sha-mo 
 great desert of Central Asia and one of the largest sandy deserts in the world. The Takla Makan occupies the central part of the Tarim Basin in the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang (Sinkiang, Uygur Autonomous Region of), northwestern China. The desert area extends about 600 miles (960 km) from west to east, and it has a maximum width of some 260 miles (420 km) and a total area of approximately 123,550 square miles (320,000 square km). The desert reaches elevations of 3,900 to 4,900 feet (1,200 to 1,500 metres) above sea level in the west and south and from 2,600 to 3,300 feet (800 to 1,000 metres) in the east and north.

Physical features
      The Takla Makan is flanked by high mountain ranges: the Tien Shan to the north, the Kunlun Mountains to the south, and the Pamirs to the west. There is a gradual transition to the Lop Nur basin in the east; in the south and west, between the sandy desert and the mountains, lies a band of sloping desert lowland composed of pebble-detritus deposits.

Physiography
      Several small mountain ranges and chains, composed of sandstones and clays of Cenozoic age (i.e., formed within about the past 65 million years), rise in the western part of the desert. The arc-shaped Mazartag Mountains, located between the Hotan and Yarkand (Yarkand River) (Ye'erqiang) river valleys, arch toward the southwest. Some 90 miles (145 km) long and 2 to 3 miles (3 to 5 km) wide, and with a maximum height of 5,363 feet (1,635 metres), they rise an average of only 1,000 to 1,150 feet (300 to 350 metres) above the surface of the sandy plain. Nearby is another insular range, surrounded on all sides by massifs of moving sands; Rosstagh Mountain, also known as Tokhtakaz Mountain, reaches an elevation of 5,117 feet (1,560 metres), and the range rises from 600 to 800 feet (180 to 240 metres) above the plain. Both ranges are covered by a shallow mantle of eluvium and rock debris and have sparse, desert-type vegetation. In the north the sands of the Takla Makan form a clear boundary with the vegetated Tarim River valley.

      The general slope of the plain is from south to north, and the rivers running off from the Kunlun Mountains flow in that direction. The Hotan and Keriya river valleys have survived up to the present day, but most of the shallower rivers have been lost in the sands, after which their empty valleys were filled by wind-borne sand.

      The surface of the Takla Makan is composed of friable alluvial deposits several hundred feet thick. This alluvial stratum has been affected by the wind, and its wind-borne sand cover is as much as 1,000 feet thick. The relief consists of a variety of eolian (wind-formed) topographic features and variously shaped sand dunes (sand dune). These eolian sand dunes were formed through the weathering of the alluvial and colluvial deposits of the Tarim Basin and of the foothill plains of the Kunluns and eastern Tien Shan. The size of the larger sand-dune chains is considerable: they range from 100 to 500 feet (30 to 150 metres) in height and 800 to 1,650 feet (240 to 500 metres) in width, with a distance between the chains of 0.5 to 3 miles (1 to 5 km). The highest eolian topographic forms are the pyramidal dunes, rising 650 to 1,000 feet (200 to 300 metres). In the eastern and central parts of the desert, networks of hollow dunes and large, complex sand-dune chains predominate. They also are common in the western portion of the desert (east of the Hotan River valley), where transverse and longitudinal (with respect to the wind) topographic forms coexist. On the edge of the desert, semipermanent, clustered sand dunes with tamarisk and nitre bushes—as well as clayey regions with disconnected sand dunes—predominate. Such a diversity in eolian features is a result of the complex wind conditions of the basin.

Climate
 The Takla Makan's climate is moderately warm and markedly continental, with a maximum annual temperature range of 70 °F (39 °C). Precipitation is extremely low, ranging from 1.5 inches (38 mm) per year in the west to 0.4 inch (10 mm) annually in the east. The air temperature in the summer is high, rising to as much as 100 °F (38 °C) on the eastern edge of the desert. In July the average air temperature is 77 °F (25 °C) in the eastern regions. Winters are cold: in January the average air temperature is 14 to 16 °F (−10 to −9 °C), and the lowest temperature reached in winter generally falls below −4 °F (−20 °C).

      Northerly and northwesterly winds prevail in the summer in the western region. These two air currents, on meeting near the desert's centre at the northern extreme of the Keriya River, create a complex circulation system that is clearly reflected in the topography of the sand dunes. In the spring, when the surface sand becomes warm, ascending currents develop, and northeasterly winds become particularly strong. During that period, hurricane-force dust storms, filling the atmosphere with dust to altitudes up to about 13,000 feet (4,000 metres), often occur. Winds from other directions also raise clouds of dust into the air, covering the Takla Makan with a shroud for almost the entire year.

Drainage
      Since the Tarim depression is an internal- drainage basin, the entire runoff from the surrounding mountains collects in the basin itself, feeding the rivers and the groundwater strata. In all probability, the groundwater table under the sands flows from the west to the arid basin of Lop Nur in the east. The importance of precipitation in moistening the sands and feeding the groundwaters is slight, however, because of its small quantity and high rate of evaporation. The rivers draining the Kunlun Mountains penetrate about 60 to 120 miles (100 to 200 km) into the desert, gradually drying up in the sands. Only the Hotan River crosses the centre of the desert and, in summer, occasionally carries its waters to the Tarim River.

Plant and animal life
      Vegetation is extremely sparse in the Takla Makan; almost the entire region is devoid of plant cover. In depressions among the sand dunes, where the groundwater lies no deeper than 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 metres) from the surface, thin thickets of tamarisk, nitre bushes, and reeds may be found. The thick strata of moving sands, however, prevent the wider spread of this vegetation. The vegetation is richer along the edges of the desert—the area where the sand dunes meet the river valleys and deltas and where the groundwaters lie comparatively close to the surface. There, in addition to the plants mentioned above, a number of species characteristic of river valleys are found: Turanga poplar, oleaster, camel thorn, members of the Zygophyllaceae (caltrop) family, and saltworts. Sand dunes in hummocks frequently form around the scrub.

      The animal life of the Takla Makan is also extremely sparse. Only in peripheral regions of the desert, in ancient and modern river valleys and deltas where water and vegetation appear, is the fauna more diverse. Herds of gazelles are found in open spaces, and there are wild boars in river-valley thickets. Wolves and foxes are among the carnivores. Until the beginning of the 20th century, tigers could still be found, but they have since been exterminated. Rare animals include the Siberian deer, which inhabits the Tarim River valley, and the wild camel, which at the end of the 19th century roamed over much of the Takla Makan as far as the Hotan River but now appears only occasionally in the eastern desert region.

      There are a large number of rabbits, gerbils, field mice, and jerboas in the sand dunes; among insectivores, the long-eared hedgehog and bats are common. Small, tufted larks and the Tarim jay are the most common birds.

People and economy
      There is no fixed population in the Takla Makan. Hunters make periodic visits, but the area territory is not used by stock breeders because of the virtual absence of vegetation.

      Since 1950 the Chinese government has encouraged the emigration of sedentary agriculturalists into the marginal lands on the edges of the Takla Makan. The yields from these low-capacity lands, however, drop after a few years, and the agriculturalists have had to move on. Because the fertility of the soil is so low to begin with, the fallow fields have tended to become desert rather than to revert to grassland. In addition, the more recent market-oriented rural reforms have encouraged a rapid expansion of herd sizes, which in turn have led to overgrazing and further intensified the desertification process.

      In the 1950s oil (petroleum) was discovered near Korla, at the northern edge of the Takla Makan. Even greater deposits were discovered from 1980s along the southern rim and in the central portion. The exploitation of these sites has been undertaken despite the extremely difficult working conditions encountered in the desert. Transportation across the shifting sands has remained hazardous, though roads exist surrounding the edge of the desert, and new ones have been built across the centre of the desert from Korla to Yutian in the south, near the Kunluns.

      Tensions between Han (Chinese) authorities and the dozen or so Hui (Muslim) minority peoples native to the Takla Makan have existed for centuries. Chinese migration into the region, coupled with Islamic fundamentalist agitation elsewhere in Asia and minority unrest across the border in the Central Asian republics, has fostered more open hostility by local peoples against the Chinese.

Study and exploration (Earth exploration)
 The fabled Silk Road caravan route connecting China with Central Asia and Europe skirted the northern and western fringes of the Takla Makan. Buddhism reached East Asia in the first centuries AD over this great trans-Asian road, and most of China's foreign trade and other outside contacts came by this way as well. By the 15th and 16th centuries, however, sea routes to East Asia had replaced the old overland routes. For several centuries, the desert and its oasis towns became a mysterious backwater for Europeans. The towering mountain ranges surrounding the Takla Makan on three sides and the daunting Gobi on the remaining side severely restricted access to a region that was already extremely hazardous to traverse.

      Thus, successful scientific exploration of the desert itself did not begin until the late 19th century. The first European to make a notable study of the region was the Swedish explorer Sven Anders Hedin (Hedin, Sven Anders), who returned from his first trek (1893–98) with artifacts of a completely forgotten Buddhist civilization that had flourished there for much of the 1st millennium AD. Hedin's discoveries and maps stimulated and aided many others, including the German Albert von Le Coq, the American Langdon Warner, and the greatest of the archaeological explorers of the Takla Makan, Sir Aurel Stein (Stein, Sir Aurel). On his first expedition, which set out in 1900, Stein excavated several towns buried in the sands and retrieved a large amount of monumental Buddhist art. This expedition set off an international race to rob the Takla Makan of its ancient treasures, which ceased only in the mid-1920s when the Chinese forbade further exploration. Most of the subsequent study of the region was undertaken by researchers from China and the Soviet Union (until 1992), although some Europeans and Americans also have visited the area.

Mikhail Platonovich Petrov Guy S. Alitto

Additional Reading
Information on the Takla Makan Desert is available in surveys of explorations in the area: Jack Autrey Dabbs, History of the Discovery and Exploration of Chinese Turkestan (1963), a comprehensive introduction with a bibliography; and Sven Hedin, Central Asia and Tibet, trans. from Swedish, 2 vol. (1903, reprinted 1991), and Across the Gobi Desert (1931, reprinted 1977; originally published in Swedish, 1928). Other records of archaeological and geographic explorations in the area include Aurel Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay: Personal Narrative of Explorations in Central Asia and Westernmost China, 2 vol. (1912, reprinted 1996), and On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks: Brief Narrative of Three Expeditions in Innermost Asia and North-Western China (1933, reissued 1982); Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1940, reprinted 1988); Paul Pelliot, Les Grottes de Touen-Houang: peintures and sculptures bouddhiques des époques des Wei, des T'ang, et des Song, 6 vol. in 4 (1914–24); Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia (1980, reissued 2001); and Basil Davidson, Turkestan Alive: New Travels in Chinese Central Asia (1957). An overview of the contemporary economic and social situation is presented in Terry Cannon and Alan Jenkins (eds.), The Geography of Contemporary China: The Impact of Deng Xiaoping's Decade (1990).Guy S. Alitto

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Universalium. 2010.

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