Lop Nor

Lop Nor
Geographical location	Xinjiang , People's Republic of China
Tributaries	(historical: Konqi )
Drain	(no)
	Data
Coordinates	40 ° 11 ′ N , 90 ° 27 ′ E Coordinates: 40 ° 11 ′ N , 90 ° 27 ′ E
Altitude above sea level	780 m
surface	2 375 km² (1931)
length	85 km (NS)
width	20 - 45 km (WE)
Maximum depth	5.2 m

The dried up salt lake Lop Nor ( Chinese 罗布泊 , Pinyin luó bù pō or after 1971 Chinese 大耳朵 , Pinyin Da'erduo for "large auricle") lies at an altitude of 780 m at the deepest point of the Tarim Basin in the northwestern Chinese Uighur Autonomous Region Xinjiang . It was one of the largest and furthest from the sea without drainage salt lakes on earth. After its tributary Kum-darja had temporarily dried up, it filled up again in 1921 until it dried out for the last time from 1958 to 1961 or until 1962. A salt marsh extends beneath the brown earth crust and the rock-hard but thin white salt crust that cover the basin of the dry lake.

Since the lake dried up, satellite images in the former lake bed have shown a pattern of concentric, ring-shaped lines that resemble an auricle . These are historical shorelines.

At the end of the 20th century, for ecological reasons, there were attempts to revitalize the lake by introducing water from Lake Bosten . However, China will forego this in the future for economic reasons, since it has meanwhile started to develop the lake basin through roads and a railway line and to extract mineral resources. Since 2008, 1.2 million tons of potash fertilizer have been produced there every year; in 2014 ^[obsolete] this production is to be increased to 3 million tons.

The S235 trunk road has been running through the area of the former salt lake since 2006.

About the name

Other spellings for Lop Nor are Lop Nur and Lob Nor .

The name Lop Nor comes from Mongolian and means “the lake in which many water sources converge” (English: the lake converging many water sources ), meaning: “catchment area for the inflow of different rivers” (English: catchment for the afflux of several rivers ). The name has been used since the Yuan Dynasty . The Mongolian word nuur means "lake".

Before the Yuan Dynasty, there were other names such as "peacock lake". The Han annals used the name forms P'u-ch'ang Hai (or Hu ), Lou-lan Hai (" Loulan Lake") and Yen-tse ("Salt Marsh"). The term Sea of Death is also used in translated Chinese texts today .

The original glacial lake

Satellite image of the central part of the Lop Nor lake basin with the helix of the former Lop Nor lake. In the left foreground you can see part of the Kuruktagh Mountains with craters of the Lop Nor nuclear weapons test site, in the background the slopes of Kumtagh and the Astintagh plateau. View from the northwest towards the southeast.

In the last ice age, the Taklamakan and the Lop Nor desert were almost entirely covered by a glacial lake . This is evident from the drill cores taken in 2003 at the Lop Nor Environmental Science Drilling Project at a depth of 160–250 meters. According to Fang Xiaomin from the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academie of Sciences , they show that in the area of the former lake 1.8 to 2.8 million years ago there was a very deep and more than 20,000 km² freshwater lake that extends over a extended period of constant heavy rain beyond the Lop Nor desert area into the Taklamakan desert area. In the drill cores, 60 meters thick deposits of indigo silt in a yellow color with a high gypsum content were found, which confirm that there was a freshwater lake of great depth, at the bottom of which there was a lack of oxygen. Finds of mussels in the drill cores show that the lake was also a freshwater lake in later times.

The surface of a lake was probably about 900 m ; this can be recognized south and north of the Lop Nor desert by steep lake terraces with an average height of 20 meters, which at that time were cut out of the surrounding coast by the lake water and which are currently 870 to 900 m above sea level. There are also indications of a lake at an altitude of about 1000 m in the Taklamakan .

1.8 million years ago in the Pliocene in the eastern Tarim Basin, a tectonic displacement created the lower basin in which the Lop Nor desert is now located. A secondary lake basin formed there around 780,000 BC due to new tectonic subsidence at the end of the middle Pleistocene .

800,000 years ago the climate in the Tarim Basin changed; it got extremely dry. The glacial lake shrank. After the Taklamakan dried up, the Lop Nor lake basin became the destination of all the rivers in the Tarim basin, which formed their deltas there, supplied their end lakes Lop Nor and Karakoshun with water and deposited the salt carried along in the rivers in a huge salt pan .

Lop Nor lake

The outflow-free lake Lop Nor has existed continuously for over 20,000 years in changing size and location in the Lop-Nor basin, to which the arid to fully arid climate contributed, which did not change over a long period of time. The rivers in the deltas meandered and formed yardangs that remained as elongated islands between the different rivers.

The mass spectrometric investigation of sediments with biotic deposits in 2006 reveal four climatic periods.

Since 1980, a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been studying the Lop Nor. Between 1980 and 1981 it determined with the help of the radiocarbon method that Lake Lop Nor had existed continuously for over 20,000 years in varying sizes and locations in the Lop Nor Basin, to which the arid to fully arid climate contributed, which did not change over a long period of time changed. The changing height of the lake level is evident from the sequence of layers of the plinth on which the stupa (also known as the watchtower) of Loulan is located; some of the six layers consist only of fine yellow sands, while others consist of clay with plant and animal remains, including the shells of freshwater snails.

Map (1935) by Folke Bergman with the main archaeological finds of the Sino-Swedish expedition 1927–1933 in the Lop Nor desert in Xinjiang, China
Translations:
Ruiner: ruins of settlements and fortresses from before 330
Gammalt vakttorn: ruins of signal towers of the Great Wall of China
Grovar: burial sites from 2000 BC BC to 330
Bulak: Well (dried up since 1971)
Ördeks necropolis: Necropolis that was found by Sven Hedin's guide Ördek and researched and documented by Folke Bergman; new name: Xiaohe
Nya Lop-nor: Lake Lop Nor, which existed in the years 1921–1971, was measured by the Sino-Swedish expedition and then dried up

Folke Bergman's map of eastern Xinjiang from 1939 with prehistoric sites and the routes of the Silk Road

On the rivers that led to the Lop Nor, river oases were created that made early Bronze Age settlements with necropolises possible 4,000 years ago . From 900 BC Chr. Developed Iron Age settlements with cemeteries. In northwest China, around 200 BC, A period of high temperatures and heavy precipitation, which was followed by a period of prolonged drought and drought from the third to the fifth centuries. From 200 BC In BC, the rivers that carried their water to Lop Nor became broad rivers that desalinated the lake's water, carried fresh water over the lake shore and created large wetlands that could be used for agriculture. The Lop Nor was now of almost inestimable importance for the cultures of the Tarim Basin along the Silk Road , namely for the Uyghur Loplik, who inhabited this desert and lived mainly from fishing.

In records from the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 200 AD), Lake Lop Nor is described as follows: “P'u-ch'ang Hai (ie Lop Nor) covers an area of 300 Li (= 150 km) length and width, the water ends here, its height never changes. ”Old Chinese maps show the salt lake with a diameter of 150 km. From 200 BC onwards, climate change led to BC to founding cities in Loulan , Miran , Haitou, Yingpan, Merdek and Qakilik . The city of Loulan, which was located on a river and experienced an economic boom as an outpost for the Chinese, was abandoned around 330 along with other settlements on the Kum-darja because of the lack of water. One reason was the beginning of a change in the climate, which led to the rivers and river oases drying up and Loulan from now on lacking fresh water. It has also been suggested that the frequent earthquakes turned the Tarim in a different direction. The Middle Silk Road north of Lake Lop Nor was now impassable, and the population in the Lop Nor desert was rapidly declining.

According to a report by the Chinese Li Daoyuan entitled Shuijing zhu (Part 2), which was written before AD 527, the lake had three tributaries: Qiemo (i.e., Cherchen-Darya or Qarqan He), Nan (i.e., Tarim ) and Zhubin (i.e., Haedik-gol and its lower reaches Konqi , Konche-darja, and Kum-darja). Apparently the lake was running water again at this point. In the late Qing Dynasty , it was 80 or 90 Li (40 or 45 km) long from east to west and 1–2 or 2–3 Li (0.5–1 or 1–1.5 km) from south to north wide.

It could be that Lop Nor existed as a lake at the beginning of the 18th century. Sven Hedin noted what the eighty-year-old chief Kuntschekan Bek had told him in 1896 in the fishing village of Abdal: “That his grandfather, Numet Bek, lived in his youth by a large lake north of the Karakoshun , and that the Karakoshun was not formed until around 1720 have".

Between 1725 and 1921, the Karakoshun lake basin in the southwest of the Lop Nor desert was filled with fresh water from the Tarim, and the Lop Nor became a salt marsh. In 1921 the Karakoshun dried up and the Tarim brought its water back to Lop Nor. The Uighur Loplik left around 1920 settlements in the Lop Nor desert after a plague - epidemic had led to numerous deaths there.

The size of the lake was 3100 km² in 1928, 1500 - 1800 km² in 1931, 3006 km² in 1942, 2000 km² in 1950 and 5350 km² in 1958. Lop Nor had its deepest water level in 1934 in the spiral elevation, a water level only a few centimeters high existed between the area of the elevation and the confluence of the river Kum-darja to the north. The wetlands on the lake had a size of 10,000 km².

Sven Hedin sailed the northern part of the lake on May 16, 1934. According to his information, the lake was 130 km long and up to 80 km wide.

Since 1949, the Xinjiang Production and Development Corps has carried out numerous irrigation projects in the Tarim Basin and the Yanji Basin in order to resettle immigrant Han Chinese in Xinjiang. In the area of the Tarim and its tributaries alone, the irrigated arable land increased from 351,200 ha in 1949 to 776,600 ha in 1994; During the same period, irrigation canals with a length of 1,088 km and 206 reservoirs with a total capacity of 3 billion cubic meters of water were built. The excess water from Lake Bosten , which until 1949 had primarily fed the Lop Nor, has been used to irrigate the Yanji Basin since 1949. The outflow of the Bosten Lake, the Konqi , has received little water since then and could no longer supply the Konche-darja and its lower reaches Kum-darja or the lower reaches of the Tarim . Since 1961 or 1962, Lop Nor and its wetlands have fallen completely dry. This led to the death of the bank vegetation and the expansion of the dunes.

For ecological reasons, water has been discharged from Lake Bosten several times since April 2000 via the Konqi into the Tarim and into the lake. According to a resolution of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region from winter 2000–2001, water from the Lio River is to be channeled through a tunnel under the Tianshan Mountains to the Tarim River so that Lake Lop Nor can be re-created by water from the Ilo. The project is called “Redirecting Water from North to South”.

The lake basin

Satellite image of the central part of the Lop Nor lake basin and the Lop Nor desert, over which a sandstorm is passing (view in south direction). In the foreground you can see the slopes of the Kuruk Tag Mountains, in the background the slopes of the Kumtag and the plateau of the Astintag, on which Lake Ayakkum lies on the right and the smaller Lake Gas on the left.

Since 1961 or 1962, Lake Lop Nor with its tributaries Konche-darja and Kum-darja has fallen dry. Since then, his dry lake basin has been the focus of scientific, economic and political interest.

The lake basin is 780 m above sea level at the deepest point of the Tarim basin and with 21,000 km² is almost as large as Hesse . It measures 260 km from the southeast to the northwest and has a maximum width of 145 km. Its biotic deposits accumulated a layer of 1.50 m over the millennia, which consists of pollen from aquatic plants and proves that the Lop Nor has kept water for long periods of time and has been a biotope for aquatic plants.

The surface consists of alluvial calcareous and salty soil and is covered as a salt clay plain by a hard and sometimes highly broken salt crust, which makes the northeast of the salt desert almost impassable. The brown earth crust and the rock hard but thin white salt crust are deceptive; because a dangerous salt marsh is already half a meter below the surface.

Satellite images show a helix in the shape of an auricle with concentric circles in the west of the lake basin . The salt deposits on its shorelines formed this helix over long periods of time. The deposits are so hard that they cannot be broken with a hammer or ax. The Lop Nor filled the Helix until 1961 or 1962 and also extended to the north at a smaller latitude.

John Hare saw the parched Lop Nor from the north in 1996 and described him as follows:

“The gray, hazy surface of the lake bed stretched to the horizon. To the east, a number of black lumps - probably small hills - seemed to loom over the horizon on a headland. In the west there were more blackish objects trembling, like horsemen in the rising warm air, but apart from these slightly ominous shapes, gray was the predominant color. Even the blue sky had disappeared behind the dust that the howling wind was now stirring up. "

Development of natural resources

The satellite image from October 12, 2009 shows the plant for the annual production of 1.2 million tons of potash fertilizer. The photo also shows the connection of the plant to the trunk road and the electrified railway line to Hami, which is currently under construction .

The Lop Nor lake basin is a sedimentary salt deposit of sylvinite potash salt for the production of fertilizers and contains the largest deposit of sylvine in China. It has a proven record of 240 million tons of potassium chloride and total estimated reserves of 500 million tons of potash salt. The confirmed occurrences are located in an area that extends 60.5 km from north to south and 32.5 km from east to west for a total of 1,710 km².

The development of a potassium chloride field by Lop Nur Sylvite Science and Technology Development Co. Ltd on an area of 21.6 km² and the construction of the pilot plant were completed by 2003. A potassium chloride plant was able to produce around 1,000 tons of high-quality potassium sulphate in its test phase . By the end of 2003, the output amounted to 5,000 tons of potassium sulfate. The pilot plant was enlarged to the south by December 2008 for the annual production of 1.2 million tons of potash fertilizer . The 10 × 21 km plant is to be expanded to almost three times its size by 2014, so that a total of 3 million tons of potash fertilizer can then be produced annually. The location of the work has coordinates 40 ° 27 ' N , 90 ° 48' O . The annual fertilizer consumption in China in 1999 was 36.7 million tons. In 2009, China imported 4 million tons of potash fertilizer. 40.442399 90.793277

The water required is brought from the north through connected open channels to the potassium chloride plant. Next to the canals there are pumping stations at certain intervals that feed the groundwater into the canals.

The technical procedure was developed in cooperation with the German professor i. R. for inorganic and inorganic-technical chemistry Hans-Heinz Emons developed.

The construction of plants to produce 80,000 tons of sodium chlorate and 100,000 tons of sodium hydroxide annually was planned in 2003.

In the Lop Nor lake basin there are also deposits of crude oil, natural gas, coal, iron, copper and gold. The development of these deposits has been planned since 2003.

In July 2005, Prof. Dr. Li Zhenyu from Wuhan on the southern edge of the Lop Nor desert on the northern foothills of the Altun Mountains found an underground groundwater lake that is over 10 km long and about 4 km wide. In the spring of 2003, groundwater reserves were found in the east of the Lop Nor desert.

Since 2006 there has been a trunk road that connects the city of Hami with the factory premises. In June 2009, the construction of a 360 kilometer long railway line from Hami to this factory site began. "When rail traffic starts, it will be easier to move Lop Nor's potash salt," said Wang Huisheng, president of State Development and Investment Corp , in June 2009. The rail line also touches a deposit of 23 billion tons of coal and will be the transportation of coal to the huge coal-fired power station in Hami.

Maps

In 2007, 49 topographic maps of the Lop Nor Desert on a scale of 1: 50,000 were issued. The previous map series of the Lop Nor desert came from Sven Hedin , whose Central Asia atlas was published posthumously in 1966. In this series of maps, Sven Hedin used the route recordings that were made during his own expeditions and during Sir Aurel Stein's expeditions between 1896 and 1935.

Research history

Nikolai Michailowitsch Prschewalski went to Lake Karakoshun in 1876 and mistakenly thought that it was Lake Lop Nor. He explored the south and west banks and drove the Karakoshun half its length. The very shallow but open water then turned into a dense, no longer navigable reed vegetation, only to ebb away in the desert. In his diary he wrote: The desert has conquered the river, death conquered life. There were doubts among geographical experts whether Prschewalski had actually found the Lop Nor.

Stieler's Handatlas 1891 took over the information from Prschewalski and gave the Karakoshun the name Lob Nor .

The important German China researcher Ferdinand von Richthofen claimed that Prschewalski had probably discovered another lake, as Lop Nor can be found on the Chinese maps about two degrees of latitude further north. Prschewalski, in turn, questioned the reliability of the Chinese maps. Several Russian, English and French expeditions were now looking for the Lop Nor, but mainly followed in Prschewalski's footsteps and reached the Karakoshun.

In 1901 the Swedish geographer and explorer Sven Hedin put an end to this dispute. He followed the old Chinese maps and found Lop Nor, an almost dry, shallow lake overgrown with reeds. Sven Hedin gave an explanation for the drying up of the Lop Nor: The masses of sand and mud previously carried by the Kum-darja, which settled in the Lop Nor, slowly lifted the lake basin, while at the same time storms removed sediment from the dry lake basin of the Karakoshun. The Konch-darja then changed its direction of flow and flowed into the now deeper lake basin of the Karakoshun. That is the reason why the Lop Nor and its tributary Kum-darja had no water in the 19th century.

Sven Hedin called the Lop Nor a “wandering lake” and the tributary a “nomadic river”. This “spatial variability” (Hedin) was repeated several times, the last time in 1921. Then the Konch-darja again supplied the Kum-darja and the Lop Nor with water, while the Karakoshun dried up.

In the years 1980–1981 a research group from the Chinese Academy of Sciences toured the Lop Nor desert and created a map with the two separate sea basins Karakoshun and Lop Nor. The two questions, whether it was correct to name Lake Karakoshun as Lake Lop Nor and whether Sven Hedin was right when he called Lake Lop Nor a “migratory lake”, are answered by the Chinese scientists of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the book The Mysterious Lop Lake denied. In the 20th century, the two lakes not only had a different geographical location, but also a different altitude: Lake Lop Nor 780 meters, Lake Karakoshun 790 meters above sea level . Therefore, it was impossible that the deeper Lake Lop Nor was a "migratory lake" and "migrated over" into the higher Lake Karakoshun.

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Li, BaoGuo, et al. "High precision topographic data on Lop Nor basin's lake" Great Ear "and the timing of its becoming a dry salt lake." Chinese Science Bulletin 53.6 (2008): 905-914. ( PDF )

^ Source: Discussion on the dried-up time of the Lop Nur Lake. ( Memento of the original from February 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2
↑ Leading Chinese academy says Lop Nur disappeared in 1962 ( Memento of the original from May 1, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2
↑ ^a ^b Christoph Baumer: Ghost towns on the southern Silk Road, discoveries in the Takla-Makan desert. Belser, Zurich 1996, ISBN 3-7630-2334-8 , pages 159-179
↑ ^a ^b Xia Xuncheng, Hu Wenkang (ed.): The Mysterious Lop Lake. The Lop Lake Comprehensive Scientific Expedition Team, the Xinjiang Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences . Science Press, Beijing 1985, pp. 49 (English).
^ Experts Claim Quaternary Freshwater Lake at Lop Nor. china.org.cn, October 14, 2003, accessed December 12, 2008 .
^ Albert Herrmann: Loulan. China, India and Rome in the light of the excavations at Lobnor . FU Brockhaus, Leipzig 1931, p. 52 (A map with the lake terraces can be found on pages 56–57).
↑ Source: A lacustrine record from Lop Nur, Xinjiang, China: Implications for paleoclimate change during Late Pleistocene doi : 10.1016 / j.jseaes.2008.03.011
^ Albert Herrmann: Loulan. China, India and Rome in the light of the excavations at Lobnor . FU Brockhaus, Leipzig 1931, p. 53 .
↑ Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 109, D02105, doi : 10.1029 / 2003JD003787 , 2004: Evidence for a late Holocene warm and humid climate period and environmental characteristics in the arid zones of northwest China during 2.2 - 1.8 KABP.
↑ Source: Xia Xuncheng, Hu Wenkang (ed.): The Mysterious Lop Lake. The Lop Lake Comprehensive Scientific Expedition Team, the Xinjiang Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Science Press, Beijing 1985, p. 49.
↑ Sven Hedin: The wandering lake , FA Brockhaus, Leipzig, 2nd edition 1938, p. 290.
↑ Source: Some new progress in scientific research on the Lop Nur Lake region, Xinjiang, China.
↑ Sven Hedin: The wandering lake , FA Brockhaus, Leipzig, 2nd edition 1938, p. 118 f.
↑ Source: China makes major breakthrough in sylvite applied technique.
↑ Source: World's largest potash fertilizer project operational in China.
↑ Hans-Heinz Emons: Salts in the Middle Kingdom. SES projects in China (PDF; 3.0 MB). Lecture to the natural sciences class of the Leibniz Society on September 8, 2005, pp. 8–18. See Hans-Heinz Emons: The extraction and processing of inorganic salts in the context of global development (2010) . Lecture on March 12, 2010 at the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig.
↑ Source: "Underground reservoir" discovered in Lop Nor.
↑ Source: China Finds Three Gorges-sized Reservoir in Largest Desert.
↑ Source: China starts building railway to desolate Lop Only from June 17, 2009.
↑ Scientists complete mapping "sea of death" in NW China desert. and topography and cartography in Lop Nor.
^ Sven Hedin: Central Asia atlas. Maps, Statens etnografiska museum. Stockholm 1966. (published in the series Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under the leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-swedish expedition; Issue 47. 1. Geography; 1)
↑ The map is on page 55 of the book The Mysterious Lop Lake.

Remarks

↑ Dieter Jäkel found 40 km west of Ruoqiang on the road to Qiemo at an altitude of about 1000 meters on the slope to the plain, alluvial fans ending abruptly. He writes: Thus there are many factors indicating the existence of a palaeo-Lob-Nor with a lake level of + - 1000 m asl Source: Die Erde 1991, supplementary booklet 6, pages 196-197.

literature

Factual texts

Nikolai Michailowitsch Prschewalski : From Kulja, Across the Tian Shan, to Lob-Nor . 1879.
Sven Hedin : In the heart of Asia . FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1903.
Sven Hedin : Lop-only . In: Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia 1899–1902, Vol. II . Stockholm 1905.
Ellsworth Huntington : The Pulse of Asia . Boston / New York 1907.
Sir Aurel Stein : Serindia: detailed report of explorations in Central Asia and westernmost China . Oxford 1921. (Text material is contained in Volume 1 and Volume 2 ; Images are contained in Volume 4 ; Maps are contained in Volume 5 ).
Stein, Sir Aurel: Innermost Asia: Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia, Kan-Su and Eastern Iran , Volume 1. Oxford, 1928 (maps are contained in Volume 4).
Emil Trinkler : The praise desert and the Lobnor problem based on the latest research. In: Journal of the Society for Geography in Berlin , 1929, page 353ff.
Albert Herrmann: Loulan. China, India and Rome in the light of the excavations at Lobnor. , FU Brockhaus, Leipzig 1931.
Folke Bergman : Archaeological Finds. In: Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen 1935, Gotha 1935.
Nils Hörner: Resa till Lop . Stockholm 1936 (Swedish, not translated into German).
Parker C. Chen: Lop nor and Lop desert . In: Journ. Geogr. Soc. of China 3rd Nanking 1936.
Sven Hedin : The Wandering Lake . Wiesbaden (FA Brockhaus) 1965 and Leipzig (FA Brockhaus) 1937.
Folke Bergman: Archaeological Researches in Sinkiang. Especially the Lop-Nor region. (Reports: Publication 7), Stockholm 1939 (English; the basic work on the archaeological finds in the Lop Nor desert with important maps; this work was only translated into the Chinese language around the year 2000 and is then used for Chinese archeology in Xinjiang become significant).
Sven Hedin and Folke Bergman: History of an Expedition in Asia 1927–1935 . Part III: 1933–1935 (Reports: Publication 25), Stockholm 1944.
Wenbi, Huang : Luobu Nao'er kaogu ji (The Exploration around Lob Nor: A report on the exploratory work during 1930 and 1934) [Chinese with English translation of the foreword and table of contents], Beijing 1948.
Herbert Wotte: Course towards unexplored . Leipzig (FA Brockhaus) 1967.
Zhao Songqiao + Xia Xuncheng: Evolution of the Lop Dessert and the Lop Nor. In: The geographical journal vol. 150 (London 1984). ISSN 0016-7398
Xia Xuncheng + Hu Wenkang (Eds.): The Mysterious Lop Lake. The Lop Lake Comprehensive Scientific Expedition Team, the Xinjiang Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Science Press, Beijing 1985 (bilingual English and Chinese throughout; expedition results from the years 1980/1981 with pictures and maps; a supplement to the work of Folke Bergmann Archaeological Researches in Sinkiang. Especially the Lop-Nor Region , which was not known to the expedition members at the time ; can be borrowed from the university library of the Technical University of Berlin).
Xia Xuncheng: A scientific expedition and investigation to Lop Nor Area. Scientific Press, Beijing 1987.
Christoph Baumer: Ghost towns of the southern Silk Road: Discoveries in the Takla-Makan desert. Belser Verlag. Zurich 1996, ISBN 3-7630-2334-8 . (Pages 159–179: Report from his expedition into the Lop Nor desert and to Loulan 1996)
Christoph Baumer: The southern silk road. Islands in the sand sea. Mainz 2002, ISBN 3-8053-2845-1 (with current references).
John Hare : On the trail of the last wild camels. An expedition to forbidden China. Foreword by Jane Goodall. Frederking & Thaler, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-89405-191-4 .

Fiction

Raoul Schrott published a novella in 2000 with the title The Desert Lop Nor .

Web links

Commons : Lop Only - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Search for Lop Nor in the German Digital Library
Search for Lop Nor in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation

[Li_2008-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Li, BaoGuo, et al. "High precision topographic data on Lop Nor basin's lake" Great Ear "and the timing of its becoming a dry salt lake." Chinese Science Bulletin 53.6 (2008): 905-914. ( PDF )

[8] Dieter Jäkel found 40 km west of Ruoqiang on the road to Qiemo at an altitude of about 1000 meters on the slope to the plain, alluvial fans ending abruptly. He writes: Thus there are many factors indicating the existence of a palaeo-Lob-Nor with a lake level of + - 1000 m asl Source: Die Erde 1991, supplementary booklet 6, pages 196-197.