The long-dry 'sea of death' Lop Nur, why does the 'lake' appear again, and where does the water come from?

Lop Nur is a rather mysterious place. If there is a list of "places of death" in China, then Lop Nur will definitely be in this list.

As a well-known arid area in China, Lop Nur, which cannot grow crops, has always been ignored by the Chinese people, a farming nation. Coupled with the desolate nature of Lop Nur, this place has not been developed much.

However, in the hearts of Chinese people, Lop Nur is a very special place, because in October 1964, with a loud bang in Lop Nur, China officially became a nuclear-armed country, which symbolized that China had won the world card. Tickets for cut cakes on the table.

The reason why China chose to conduct nuclear tests in Lop Nur is mainly because Lop Nur is a very dry area with no people living there. Chinese officials always use the words "Lop Nur desert" when they publicize China's nuclear process, thus forming an inherent impression of "Lop Nur is a desert area" in the minds of the public.

In fact, everyone knows from the name Lop Nur that it is actually a lake or wetland.

The name Lop Nur is composed of two languages. Among them, "Luobu" should be called "Luobu Naoer", which is a Mongolian transliteration of Chinese, which means "lakes where many waters converge". And Po is easy to understand, which is the meaning of lake in Chinese.

As to why the name Lop Nur is concatenated like this, some people think that it was caused by the population movement in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, as the local Han people traveled between the local and the mainland, Lop Nur was spliced ​​into Lop Nor.

However, although Lop Nor is named after the Mongolian language, it is inextricably related to the Han nationality. In the Chinese "Shan Hai Jing", Lop Nur is called "Youze", and the word "Ze" originated in southern China.

During the Zhou Dynasty in China, there were a lot of records of "Ze", and there was a very famous "Ze" in the Chu State of the Zhou Dynasty, that is, Yunmeng Ze.

The word ze means big lake. Lop Nur is called Youze in the "Book of Mountains and Seas", which naturally means that it was a sparkling lake in ancient times, which is very different from today's desert areas.

And because Lop Nur has a high altitude, it is a large lake with an altitude of more than 700 meters. Therefore, some people think that Youze recorded in the "Shan Hai Jing" is the Yaochi of the legendary Queen Mother of the West.

How Lop Nur came into being

So why is Lop Nur a large lake in ancient times, but a desert today? In fact, this is mainly caused by two aspects, one is geological change, and the other is artificial intervention. But to talk about how the water in Lop Nur disappeared in the geological changes, it is necessary to talk about how Lop Nur was formed.

About 240 million years ago, in what is now Tibet, you can still see the sea when you go out. However, with the changes in geology, the two continental plates of India and Australia collided with the current Tibet area, so the coastal Tibet at that time became a plateau under the extrusion of multiple plates. At that time, the coastal areas were not only Tibet, but also China's Xinjiang region.

The backlog of these continental plates not only formed the Tibetan Plateau, but also mountains such as the Tianshan Mountains, Kunlun Mountains, and Altun Mountains. These mountain ranges surround the Tarim area, making the Tarim area a basin.

This makes the Tarim Basin have a "high altitude" of thousands of meters, but because of the surrounding of several large mountains, this high-altitude area can only become a basin.

Since it is a basin, it naturally means that it is easy to accumulate water. Once the snow cover of several major mountains melts, it will flow into this basin. Coupled with rainfall and other water sources, a large lake is formed in the lowest-lying area of ​​the Tarim Basin. We know Lop Nur.

Lop Nur is more than 700 meters above sea level and belongs to low-lying areas in the Tarim Basin, so the water that converges in the Tarim Basin eventually flows to this "depression".

Some experts estimate that the depression in Lop Nur was formed about two million years ago, and a large lake was formed in the evolution of millions of years. At that time, this large lake had an area of ​​more than 200,000 square kilometers, and it is not an exaggeration to call it an inland sea.

As we said earlier, the Book of Mountains and Seas refers to Lop Nur as Youze, and Youze means a lake that has just formed. The ancients at that time saw the water source of a small river pooling into Lop Nur, so they mistakenly thought that Lop Nur had just formed.

However, compared with the area of ​​more than 200,000 square kilometers in the peak period, the young Ze recorded in the "Shan Hai Jing" actually belongs to the old age and is about to die.

Geological reasons cause Lop Nur to dry up

After the formation of the Tibet Plateau and the Tarim Basin, this place belongs to the inland area. Coupled with the plateau barrier, Tarim has become a closed mountain basin, and the humid air from the outside cannot enter, resulting in local rainfall year after year. reduce. In addition, the western part of China belongs to high altitude, and the eastern part belongs to low altitude, so the water source in the west always flows to the east.

The water of the large lake in Lop Nur has been flowing toward eastern China for nearly a million years, so the area of ​​more than 200,000 square kilometers in Lop Nur has been shrinking.

Now only the vast alluvial plains around the Tarim Basin formed by the erosion of a large number of rivers can glimpse the glory of Lop Nur.

However, the dead camel is bigger than a horse. Even though Lop Nur has been dying for nearly a thousand years, it still belonged to a large lake in ancient times.

During the Han Dynasty in China, this place used to be the only route for the Silk Road, because in the vast desert of the Tarim Basin, Lop Nur is really a rare oasis, and traders in the past had to stop here if they wanted to replenish their supplies.

Moreover, under the influence of the Silk Road and Lop Nur, an ancient city has also formed here, which is the ancient city of Loulan that we are familiar with.

However, in the Han Dynasty, Lop Nur had actually reached the end of the year, and it may dry up at any time, which made Lop Nur very unstable. Around 400 AD, due to the diversion of some rivers, Lop Nur shrank again, and the area was greatly reduced again, which was also the reason for the demise of the ancient city of Loulan.

It can be seen that in the past thousand years, Lop Nur mainly relied on river water to maintain its own area. In fact, in the Lop Nur area, the annual precipitation here is only about 20 mm, but its annual evaporation exceeds 3,000 mm.

The huge difference in precipitation and evaporation has led to the drought around Lop Nur, and it is also doomed that Lop Nur can only rely on water injection from small rivers to maintain its existence. Once these rivers are diverted or stop water injection, Lop Nur will inevitably dry up. Therefore, some slight geological changes will cause Lop Nur to dry up.

In the 1930s, scientific expedition teams from many countries came to Lop Nur to conduct calculations. At that time, it was concluded that the area of ​​Lop Nur was about 2,000 square kilometers.

After the end of the Anti-Japanese War, China conducted another calculation on Lop Nur and found that the area of ​​Lop Nur has increased to about 3,000 square kilometers. However, for this "prehistoric inland sea", the changes of about 1,000 square kilometers are really minimal.

Human intervention causes Lop Nur to dry up

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, in order to develop Xinjiang, China built a large number of reservoirs in the Tarim River and the surrounding river basins to ensure the water supply of local residents.

Today, the number of reservoirs here has reached more than 130, and there is a trend of increasing. China's construction of local reservoirs is naturally to store water, and water storage means intercepting the water injection in the lower reaches of the Tarim River, and the former Tarim River water eventually flows to Lop Nur.

So as soon as China built the reservoir, the area of ​​Lop Nur began to shrink rapidly. By 1973, the international community had proved that the Lop Nur was completely dry, and the large lake with an area of ​​thousands of square kilometers was no longer there.

However, in recent years, China has observed that Lop Nur is being "resurrected". This "sea of ​​death" that has been dry for decades is becoming rippling with blue waves. Then, when the main water-injecting rivers in Lop Nur are basically cut off, the water is Where did it come from? This is actually the result of human intervention.

As we said earlier, Xinjiang was near the sea about 240 million years ago. When the Indian plate and the Australian plate collided, a large amount of seawater was trapped in Xinjiang, and these seawater flowed to Tarim, which is at a lower altitude in the historical evolution. The basin eventually became the local groundwater.

These seawater have been concentrated and deposited for hundreds of millions of years, and finally formed potash in the Lop Nur area. According to what most people can understand, the seawater left in Xinjiang that year flowed to the underground of Lop Nur and concentrated into brine.

Potash occupies a very important position in the field of chemical industry, because potash is an important raw material for making potash fertilizer, and potash fertilizer is a kind of fertilizer with great consumption in modern agriculture.

At present, the main potash producing countries in the world are Germany, the United States, Russia and other countries, and the giant potash mine discovered in the underground of Bo Nur is very important for China, a giant agricultural country, so it is imminent to mine the potash underground in Lop Nur. one thing.

Why is Lop Nur rippling again

So how to mine the potash underground in Lop Nur? China's practice is to extract the brine underground in Lop Nur, and then accumulate the brine. Therefore, according to satellite photos, Lop Nur, which has become a desert area, has become blue and rippling again.

However, this rippling blue wave is brought about by the extremely high concentration of potassium-containing groundwater, so this rippling blue wave is still a "sea of ​​death" where nothing can grow.

In China's exploration of Lop Nur in 1945, Chinese scientific expedition team members also caught some big fish in Lop Nur, which shows that the ecology of Lop Nur was very good at that time, but the current ecology of Lop Nur is completely incomparable to that at that time.

In addition, the potash mines in Lop Nur are stored in Lop Nur in the form of groundwater, and it is self-evident that a large amount of groundwater is extracted, which may cause irreversible ecological damage to the local area.

Therefore, China's construction of a potash mine in Lop Nur has also attracted a lot of criticism, and a large number of people are opposed to the development of potash in Lop Nur.