Taklamakan

Taklamakan desert 塔克拉瑪干 沙漠 / 塔克拉玛干 沙漠
Satellite image of the Tarim Basin with the Taklamakan Desert; to the south of this are the Kunlun Shan Mountains and the northwestern foothills of the Tibetan highlands. (NASA / MODIS, Oct. 2001)
location	People's Republic of China
surface	228,990 km²
particularities	second largest sand desert on earth

The Taklamakan Desert (also Takla Makan , Chinese  塔克拉瑪干 沙漠  /  塔克拉玛干 沙漠 , Pinyin Tǎkèlāmǎgān Shāmò or Taklimakan Shamo , Uighur: Täklimakan Toghraqliri ) is the second largest sandy desert on earth after the Rub al-Chali . It extends in Central Asia in the northwestern Chinese Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang through the western part of the Tarim Basin to Road 218. To the east of this road is the Lop Nor desert at the deepest point of the Tarim Basin. In the past, the Taklamakan Desert and the Lop Nor Desert were separated by the lower reaches of the Tarim , Konche Darya ( Konqi He ) and Chärchan Darya ( Qarqan He ) rivers, which have been dried up south of Tikanlik for decades.

etymology

The meaning of the name Taklamakan has long been unclear. The name comes from Uyghur and has been translated as follows: go in and you will never come out again , place of no return or desert of death . According to Qian Boquan , historian of the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences in Urumqi , the wrong translation is said to have come from a group of journalists who visited Xinjiang in the early 1980s. Once caught, there is no escape . After extensive studies of the Uighur dialect, Qian Boquan came to the conclusion that Taklamakan actually means the land of poplars , since Takli is a derivative of the Turkish word Tohlak or Tohrak , which means poplar . The syllable ma that follows Takli stands for big and kan , a modification of kand from old Persian , means country , city or village . According to historical documents, poplars were still very common in the Tarim Basin between 420 and 589. Another reading is "gardens of the desert".

geography

The Taklamakan Desert fills about one seventh of Xinjiang (1,640,320 km²). Its area of ​​228,990 km² is mostly covered with over 100 m high dunes , according to some information they even amount to 300 meters. The strong winds make these dunes move very quickly, and they also lead to the formation of yardangs . The dunes were created by the dust and sand deposits of the last ice age , when the Taklamakan was almost completely covered by a lake of glacial melt water (glacial lake) from the surrounding high mountains. Investigations of the heavy metal spectra depending on the catchment area of ​​the rivers could prove that the sands have a fluvial origin (from former rivers).

At a depth of a few meters, large deposits of groundwater have formed over the course of time, which were probably also fed by the meltwater from the surrounding high mountains. There are also some salt lakes in this desert .

As part of Xinjiang, the Taklamakan is earthquake-prone.

Formation of the deserts in the Tarim Basin

In the early current Ice Age (beginning around 2.6 to 2.7 million years ago) the Tarim Basin was almost completely covered by a glacial lake. In 2003, the Lop Nor Environmental Science Drilling Project took drill cores from the former Lake Lop Nor at a depth of 160–250 meters, which, according to Fang Xiaomin of the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academie of Sciences, showed that Lake Lop Nor was 1, A very deep freshwater lake of enormous size was 8 to 2.8 million years ago, which in an age with constant heavy rain extended beyond the area of ​​the Lop Nor desert into the area of ​​the Taklamakan. The organic deposits reached a height of 60 meters. In the drill cores, 60-meter-long deposits of yellow indigo silt with a high proportion of gypsum were found, which confirm that there was a freshwater lake of great depth, at the bottom of which there was no oxygen. Finds of mussels in drill cores show that the lake was also a freshwater lake in later times. The surface of this lake was about 900 meters above sea level; this can be recognized south and north of the Lop Nor desert by the steep and average 20 meter high lake terraces, which were cut out of the surrounding coast by the lake water and are 870 to 900 meters above sea level.

In the Pliocene 1.8 million years ago, a deeper basin was formed in the eastern Tarim Basin , which is now the Lop Nor desert. The rupture point runs between Korla and Qakilik along the former course of the Tarim and along road 218. In this deeper basin, it formed at the end of the Middle Pleistocene (Diluvian) around 780,000 BC. Through new tectonic subsidence, the secondary lake basin Lop Nor, which is located in the middle of today's Lop Nor desert, was created.

800,000 years ago, the climate in the Tarim Basin changed. It became extremely dry and the glacial lake shrank. After the Taklamakan dried up, the Lop Nor lake basin became the destination of all the rivers of the Tarim Basin, which gathered there in a lake without drainage, formed their deltas, supplied the end lakes Lop Nor and Karakoshun with water and the salt carried in the rivers in a huge salt pan deposited. The rivers in the deltas meandered and formed yardangs , which at that time remained as elongated islands between the various rivers.

The mass spectrometric examination of sediments with biological deposits in 2006 reveals four weather periods:

• Between 31,980 and 19,260 years ago, the climate was cold and humid.
• 19,260 to 13,530 years ago came a warm and drier climate. This led to salt deposits in the Lop Nor lake basin.
• A cold climate emerged again 13,530 to 12,730 years ago.
• Between 12,730 and 11,800 years ago, the climate was mainly hot and humid and cold.

Since 1980, a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been studying the Lop Nor. From 1980 to 1981 it determined with the help of the radiocarbon method that Lake Lop Nor had existed in the Lop Nor Basin in varying sizes and locations for over 20,000 years, to which the arid to fully arid climate contributed, which did not change for 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.

River oases were created along the rivers that made Bronze Age settlements possible 4000 years ago, in which people with European physical characteristics lived, whose mummies are found in Bronze Age tombs and necropolises. In northwest China, around 200 BC, A period of high temperatures and heavy rainfall, which was followed by a period of prolonged drought and drought until the 5th century. From 200 BC BC the rivers became broad streams that created large wetlands that could be used for agriculture. From 200 BC onwards, climate change led to BC to numerous city foundations (for example in Loulan , Miran , Haitou, Yingpan, Merdek and Qakilik ); However, various city foundations were abandoned by the 5th century due to the lack of water. The cause was an incipient change in climate, which led to the fact that rivers and river oases dried up and that the desert in the Tarim basin spread.

climate

Climate diagram of Tikanlik

With less than 30 mm of precipitation per year, the desert is considered to be hyperarid . This extremely dry climate is the result of a combination of two factors. On the one hand, the Taklamakan is a relief desert, a desert that lies in the rain shadow of mountains. Then there is the continental location . Air masses brought in from the sea lost their moisture before they reached Central Asia. This lack of cloudiness can exacerbate the high temperatures.

Due to the distance to a sea with balancing warmth, the temperatures fluctuate extremely strongly. Since it is a very inaccessible area, meteorological statements are uncertain and differ depending on the source. According to Bruno Baumann, it can be 62 degrees hot during the day and twelve degrees cold at night. It is estimated that temperatures fluctuate around 70 ° C during the day and 90 ° C during the year. The temperature fluctuations have no effect on the drought, but they are another hostile factor.

Kara Buran

The Kara Buran , the "black sandstorm ", is notorious . It can stir up tons of sand and last for days or even weeks. It got its name because it often darkens the sky. The time of Kara Buran is from February to June; the sandstorm comes every three to five days, mainly from the northeast. The dust mist, which lasts for weeks, can significantly reduce solar radiation. Since many caravans and probably even entire cities have already fallen victim to him, he was associated with many myths . Locals tell the legend of the army of a Chinese emperor, which is said to be buried under the sand of a 250 meter high dune.

vegetation

At the foot of the high mountains there are numerous oases with rich vegetation. The meltwater of the Kunlun Shan and Tian Shan ( coordinate ) form, among other things, the Tarim . This flows on the edge of the desert in an east-west direction, where it enables agricultural use on the very fertile loess .

The vegetation-rich areas are surrounded by a belt of thin vegetation. This belt of vegetation offers extensive protection against the spread of the desert . However, the increasing use of plants as fodder and firewood threatens to destroy the protective belt. The devastating thing about the existing overexploitation compared to moderate use is that the very dry topsoil makes natural regeneration as good as impossible.

Examples of plants in the belt are the Tamarix ramosissima and Populus euphratica , which were examined by Göttingen researchers. The Tamarix ramosissima grows in salty and alkaline soils and has deep roots. The plant excretes salts via the scale leaves.

Near the oasis town of Yarkant, which is irrigated by the river of the same name and thus has a belt of vegetation

The Populus euphratica ( Euphrates poplar ) is a salt-tolerant plant which, through the emission of isoprene, causes an increased temperature tolerance of the leaves. Both have to make do with 33 mm of annual precipitation at locations remote from the river, which is only possible by drawing on groundwater. Both species occur differently because the Tamarix can grow with deeper groundwater than the Populus.

Behind the protective belt, the vegetation decreases and the core desert begins. The actual Taklamakan is a hyperarid and therefore almost lifeless desert, so it cannot be compared with lively semi-deserts like the Kalahari . There is hardly any information on the nuclear desert in the literature. Walter and Breckle only state in “Vegetation and Climate Zones” that the Taklamakan desert is devoid of vegetation. One can probably say something similar about the core desert as about the Iranian Lut and parts of the Sahara : Although there is no visible vegetation over thousands of square kilometers, soil samples showed thousands of bacteria and fungal spores per gram of soil.

Settlement history

Central Asia with the Silk Road

Many archaeological traces are well preserved by the drought. In the Taklamakan, for example, there are some sunken cities that have become uninhabitable either due to the spread of the desert and sandstorms or the drying up of their tributaries. The archaeological finds indicate Tocharian , Hellenistic and Buddhist influences. The researchers and discoverers Nikolai Michailowitsch Prschewalski , Aurel Stein , Albert von Le Coq , Paul Pelliot and especially Sven Hedin described the dangers of the journey and the lost cities of the desert.

In addition to city ruins, more than 100 mummies have been found in this region , some of which are at least 4000 years old. The oldest of these mummies surprisingly show European characteristics. Various grave goods and other artefacts point to Indo-European origins, so that it can be concluded that in the course of the expansion of the Indo-Europeans, groups of people belonging to them migrated here and settled here. Maybe these people were the ancestors of the later testified here Tocharer .

Later the oases of the desert were inhabited by Turkic peoples . During the Tang Dynasty , the Eastern Turks were first defeated, and China was able to expand its influence on the important Silk Road . This road was divided into two parts in this region: its sections led along the northern and southern edges of the inaccessible Taklamakan. Phases of Chinese rule were interrupted by the rule of Eastern Turks, Mongols and Tibetans . Today's rural population consists mainly of the Turkic peoples of the Uighurs and the Kazakhs , while the larger cities are now predominantly populated by Han Chinese .

Discovery story

In Europe, the Taklamakan first came into focus in 1888 (according to other sources, 1889). After the murder of the British trader Andrew Dalgleishs in the Himalayas, the perpetrator fled along the desert. Bowers, who survived a second attack, pursued the perpetrator and found old documents in an oasis. They were written in an Indian language from the 5th century and dealt with a city in the desert sands. They are considered to be the first Buddhist documents that prove the influence of the Indian culture of the time.

In 1895, the explorer Sven Hedin set out on his journey to cross the desert. During the crossing, he barely got away with his life due to lack of water. The dramatic journey became a myth that continues to this day. The extreme athlete Bruno Baumann dared a trip through the desert on April 8, 2000 to find out the background to Hedin's journey and also only barely survived. Back then, Sven Hedin found the remains of Dandan Oilik , a city sunk in the desert. There wall paintings showed Indian, Greek and Persian influences.

Development

Countryside near Yarkant

Old and new town of Korla , 2007

Due to its climate, the Taklamakan was inaccessible for a long time. The routes of the former Silk Road have now been expanded into asphalt roads, on which the entire desert can be bypassed. Road 314 is now on the north route of the Silk Road and road 315 on the south route; the east connection of both streets is the street 218. On these streets on the edge of the Tarim basin there are oasis towns like Hotan ( Khotan ), Kashgar and Aksu . The oases are supplied with water by meltwater from the surrounding high mountains. The former Middle Route of the Silk Road from Korla via Loulan Gucheng to Yumenguan Guzhi and on to Dunhuang ( Mingoshan ) no longer exists; therefore the construction of road 218 became necessary.

Large oil and gas deposits have been discovered roughly in the middle of the desert. To develop it, the Chinese government built the Tarim highway in 1995 for around ten million euros per kilometer, which spans the Taklamakan desert from Bügür ( Luntai ) on road 314 to Yawatongguzlangar near Minfeng (Niya ) completely traversed in north-south direction. With a length of 520 kilometers, it is considered the world's longest desert road. This road with sand dune reinforcements on both sides and a permanent road cleaning service is therefore also regarded as the most expensive road in the world in terms of its construction and maintenance.

On October 4, 2002, another desert crossing highway called the Qieta Desert Highway was opened to traffic. This also leads in a north-south direction through the Taklamakan and connects Korla (Kurla) with the district of Qarqan ( Qiemo xian , 且末 县) and its main town, the large community of Qiemo ( Qiemo zhen , 且末 鎮, Chümo = Tarran ) ( Coordinate ). With the construction of this new expressway, the two-day journey from Korla to Qiemo can now be completed in just eight hours.

Construction of another highway through the Taklamakan began in May 2005. This single-lane Aral-Hotan desert road has been connecting the cities of Aral and Hotan from south to north with a length of 424 kilometers since January 2007 . It was estimated that it would be worth 800 million yuan to realize it.

literature

• Pierre Gentelle: Une geographie du mouvement. Le désert du Taklamakan et ses environs comme modèle. In: Annales de geographie. 567, pp. 553-594.
• Dieter Jäkel, Zhu Zhenda: Reports on the 1986 Sino-German Kunlun Shan Taklimakan Expedition (= reports on the Sino-German Kunlun Shan Taklamakan Expedition 1986. Text volume and map supplement. / Die Erde. Supplement 6). Society for Geography in Berlin, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-87670-991-1 .
• Christoph Baumer: Ghost towns in the Taklamakan desert. Belser, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-7630-2334-8 .
• Bruno Baumann: Caravan of no return. Malik, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89029-177-5 .
• Christoph Baumer: The southern silk road. Islands in the sand sea. Sunken cultures of the Taklamakan desert. von Zabern, Mainz 2002, ISBN 3-8053-2845-1 .
• Anke Kausch: Silk Road. From China through the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts over the Karakoram Highway to Pakistan. Dumont art travel guide, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-7701-5243-3 .
• Alfried Wieczorek, Christoph Lind (Ed.): Origins of the Silk Road. Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-2160-2 .
• Carla Perrotti: In the silence of the sand. Alone through the Takla Makan and the Simpson Desert. Frederking & Thaler, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-89405-840-1 .
• Christoph Baumer, Aurel Schmidt, Therese Weber: Through the Taklamakan desert. In the footsteps of Sven Hedin and Sir Aurel Stein. Nünnerich-Asmus, Mainz 2013, ISBN 978-3-943904-09-3 .

Maps

• West China. Reise-Know-How-Verlag, Bielefeld 2005, ISBN 3-8317-7163-4 (scale 1: 2,700,000).

Web links

Commons : Taklamakan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Destabilization and conflict potential of forecast environmental changes in the Central Asia region by 2020/2050 ( Memento from April 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.7 MB)
• Report on an expedition , published in the NZZ Folio magazine
• Mysterious River Advances through Desert (English) The Hotan flows through the Taklamakan and reaches the Tarim in August.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Chai, Huixia, et al. "Digital regionalization of geomorphology in Xinjiang." Journal of Geographical Sciences 19.5 (2009): 600-614. ( PDF )
2. ^ ZDF expedition: Taklamakan - Land of No Return. Film by Jon Jerstad, Viktor Stauder, ZDF / 2003
3. ^ ZDF documentary: Documentation by Bernd Liebner and Cheng Wie, 2002 (with film recordings by the cameraman Paul Lieberenz from the Sino-Swedish expedition ). Also as DVD: Verlag Complete Media, ISBN 978-3-8312-8811-3 .
4. ↑ Michael Martin: The deserts of the earth. Frederking & Thaler, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89405-435-2 , p. 313 f.
5. ^ Albert Herrmann: Loulan. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1931, p. 52. A map with the lakeside terraces can be found on p. 56–57.
6. ↑ Albert Herrmann: Lou-lan. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1931, p. 53.
7. ↑ Yang Bao, Achim Braeuning, Shi Yafeng, Chen Fahu: 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 kyr BP In: Journal of Geophysical Research. 109, 2004, doi : 10.1029 / 2003JD003787 .
8. ^ Marianne Popp, Stefan K. Arndt, Ansgar Kahmen, Christina Arampatsis: Ecological basis for a sustainable use of desert vegetation. ( PDF; 156 kB ) University of Göttingen.
9. ↑ Dirk Gries: Influence of the height above the water table on the growth and water balance of Tamarix ramosissima and Populus euphratica on silt dunes in the Taklamakan desert, northwest China. On user.gwdg.de ; last accessed on April 26, 2014.
10. ↑ Michael Martin: The deserts of the earth. Frederking & Thaler, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89405-435-2 , p. 323.
11. ↑ The Silk Road: The epitome of a longing route . In: GEO Special. No. 06/2007.

Coordinates: 39 °  N , 83 °  E