Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
70°E
80°E
90°E
100°E
110°E
120°E
130°E
50°N
E
45°N
A
Tianshan Mountains
PAMIR
PLATEAU
D
C
40°N
1
4
6
7
2
5
3
B
Helan
Mts
35°N
TIBETAN PLATEAU
0
500
km
Mountains
Sandy deserts
Sandy lands
Figure 8.12. Map showing sandy deserts (active dune fields: 1 to 7) and sandy lands
(areas of stabilised dunes: A to E) in northern China. (After Yang et al.,
2011b
.) Major
mountain ranges in grey. 1. Taklamakan Desert; 4. Badain Jaran Desert; 5. Tengger
Desert.
During drier intervals in the late Pleistocene, the coastal dunes in the tropical south
of the subcontinent were also active (Jayangondaperumal et al.,
2012
). These dunes
are also polygenic and consist of alternating fossil soils and wind-blown sand, as in
the Thar Desert dunes.
8.13 Desert dunes of northern China
There is a considerable body of descriptive empirical research dealing with the desert
dunes in China. Much of this work had a strong practical focus and was linked to
efforts to prevent the movement of mobile dunes across certain strategically important
roads and railways in arid northern and western China. Recent discoveries of oil in
the Taklamakan Desert (
Figure 8.12
) have likewise encouraged dune stabilisation
measures along key access roads during the past twenty years and have drawn on
studies of dune movement carried out by the late Professor Zhu Zhenda and his
colleagues during his time as Director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
Desert Research Institute at Lanzhou, located in the northern Loess Plateau (Zhu
et al.,
1989
; Zhu and Wang,
1992
; Zhu and Wang,
1993
). The detailed maps of the
various dune fields produced during the course of this work remain useful to this day
and provide valuable information on rates of dune movement in relation to dune type.
In contrast to India, discussed in the previous section, which has one large sandy
desert only, China has twelve distinct deserts or sandy lands, only some of which have
