Aeolian origin of interdune lakes in the Badain Jaran Desert, China
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Aeolian origin of interdune lakes in the Badain Jaran Desert, China Zhen-Ting Wang1 · Tian-Yuan Chen2 · Si-Wen Liu3 · Zhong-Ping Lai4
Received: 26 June 2015 / Accepted: 10 September 2015 / Published online: 10 March 2016 © Saudi Society for Geosciences 2016
Abstract The coexistence of megadunes and interdune lakes is a unique landscape in the Badain Jaran Desert. Its formation mechanism is an open question. Two necessary conditions for a lake are water and basin. Different from various previous works focusing on water source, here, the lake basin origin is investigated. The chronological, geomorphological, and aerodynamic evidences support that the elongated lakes in the southeastern margin of the desert are aeolian lakes. Keywords Megadune · Wind erosion · Blowout · Aeolian lake
The tallest terrestrial dune about 450 m high occurs in the Bardain Jaran Desert, China (Dong et al. 2004; Yang et al. 2011). The modern wind regimes in the desert comprise intermediate and high energy wind environments. Three dominant winds are from northwest, northeast, and southwest, see Zhang et al. (2015) for more detailed information
Zhen-Ting Wang
[email protected] 1
Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, People’s Republic of China
2
Key Laboratory of Salt Lake Resources and Chemistry, Qinghai Institute of Salt Lake, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining 810008, People’s Republic of China
3
National Research Center for Geoanalysis, Beijing 100037, People’s Republic of China
4
State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, People’s Republic of China
about wind velocity and sand drift potential. The average annual precipitation over the period from 1980 to 2013 is less than 90 mm, whereas the annual potential evaporation is more than 2500 mm. The coexistence of megadunes and closed interdune lakes, mainly occurring in the southern part of the desert, is a well-known, attractive, and mysterious landscape. A very recent field survey showed that the numbers of permanent and seasonal lakes are 119 and 27, respectively (Zhang et al. 2012). Two types of lakes, namely, elongated and oval-shaped lakes, had been morphologically classified (Hofmann 1996). Elongated lakes are often shallow in depth (< 2 m) and small in area (< 0.2 km2 ). In contrast, oval-shaped lakes are deep and large. Their maximal depth and area can reach 15 m and 1.5 km2 . As pointed out in the review of Dong et al. (2013), the formation of these lakes is one of the three key issues being studied in the last two decades. A great number of hydrochemical, hydrogeological, and paleoclimatic works, e.g., (Chen et al. 2004; Ma and Edmunds 2006; Gates et al. 2008; Wu et al. 2014), were performed to find the source of water. But no lake has ever existed without a basin in which water accumulated (Reeves 1968). According to their basin origins, lakes can be classified as tectonic, fluvial, glacial lakes, etc (
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