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Taklimakan Desert (Uyghur: تكلىماكنقۇمۇى) is located in the center of Tarim Basin in southern Xinjiang. It is the largest desert in China, the tenth largest desert in the world, and the second largest mobile desert in the world. The desert is about 1000 kilometers long from east to west and 400 kilometers wide from north to south, covering an area of 330000 square kilometers. The average annual precipitation is less than 100 mm, and the lowest is only 45 mm, while the average evaporation is 2500-3400 mm. Here, pyramidal dunes stand 300 meters above the plain. Strong winds can lift sand walls up to three times their height. The sand dunes in the desert are continuous and often move due to the influence of wind. There are also a small number of plants in the desert, whose roots are extremely developed, tens or even hundreds of times more than the aboveground parts, in order to absorb underground water. The animals there have the phenomenon of dormancy.
The origin of the name
Taklimakan desert is a cursed and submerged city in Uygur legend. The word "Taklimakan" is divided into two parts, "Taklimakan" and "maklimakan", in which "Taklimakan" means "underground", "below"; "maklimakan" means "field", "home", "place to live"; therefore, "Taklimakan" means "underground city" or "underground City".
geographical environment
position
The whole desert is about 1000 kilometers long from east to west and 400 kilometers wide from south to north, covering a total area of 337600 square kilometers. It is distributed in four regions of Xinjiang: Bayinguoleng, Aksu, Kashgar and Hotan. It is the largest desert in China, so it is called "Taklimakan Desert". It is also the second largest mobile desert in the world, next only to the lubkhari desert (650000 square kilometers) in the Arabian Peninsula The area of quicksand is the largest in the world.