Lop Nur

Lop Nur or Lop Nor (Uyghur: لوپنۇر, Oirat: ᠯᠣ᠊ᠫᠨᡇᡇᠷ, romanized: Lob nuur, from an Oirat Mongolic name meaning "Lop Lake", where "Lop" is a toponym of unknown origin) is a now largely dried-up salt lake formerly located within the Lop Depression in the eastern fringe of the Tarim Basin in the southeastern portion of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, northwestern China, between the Taklamakan and Kumtag deserts. Administratively, the lake is in Lop Nur town (Chinese: 罗布泊镇; pinyin: Luóbùpō zhèn), also known as Luozhong (罗中; Luózhōng) of Ruoqiang County, which in its turn is part of the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture. The lake system, into which the Tarim River and Shule River drain from the west and east respectively, is the last remnant of the historical post-glacial Tarim Lake, which once covered more than 10,000 km2 (3,900 sq mi) in the Tarim Basin but had progressively shrunk throughout the Holocene due to rain shadowing by the Tibetan Plateau. Lop Nur is hydrologically endorheic; it is landbound, has no outlet, and has relied largely on meltwater runoffs from the Tianshan, Kunlun and the western Qilian Mountains. The lake measured 3,100 km2 (1,200 sq mi) in 1928, but has dried up due to construction of reservoirs which dammed the flow of water feeding into the lake, and only small seasonal lakes and salt marshes may form. The dried-up Lop Nur Basin is covered with a salt crust ranging from 30 to 100 cm (12 to 39 in) in thickness. An area to the northwest of Lop Nur has been used as the principal nuclear testing site of the People's Republic of China. Since the discovery of potash at the site in the mid-1990s, it is also the location of a large-scale mining operation. There are some restricted areas under military management and cultural...