Lop Nur

Lop Nur is a group of small, now seasonal salt lake sand marshes between the and Kuruktag deserts in the southeastern portion of in the People's Republic of China.

The lake system into which the Tarim River empties is the last remnant of the historical post-glacial Tarim Lake, which once covered more than 10,000 square kilometers in the Tarim Basin. Lop Nur is hydrologically endorheic— it is landbound and there is no outlet. Though it was determined to be a single salt lake by ancient Chinese geographers, the lake system has largely dried up from its 1928 measured area of 3,100 km?, and the desert has spread by windblown sandy loess. This has shifted the lake system 30 to 40 km westwards during the past 40 years. A partial cause for the destabilization of the desert has been the cutting of poplars and willows for firewood; in response, a reserve was established in 2003 to preserve 3,520 square kilometres of poplar.

History

Former water resources of the Tarim River and Lop Nur nurtured the kingdom of Loulan, an ancient Chinese civilization along the Silk Road, which skirted the lake-filled basin. Loulan became a client-state of the Chinese empire in 55 BCE, renamed Shanshan. Once the lake also supported a thriving culture. have discovered the buried remains of settlements, as well as several of the Tarim mummies, along its ancient shoreline. Marco Polo passed near the lake, and the explorers Ferdinand von Richthofen, Nikolai Przhevalsky and Sven Hedin visited the area. It is also likely that Swedish soldier Johan Gustaf Renat had visited the area when he was helping the Zunghars to produce maps over the area in the eighteenth century.

The first Chinese nuclear bomb test, codenamed "", was tested at Lop Nur in 1964. Since 1964, the lake has been used as a nuclear test site. Until 1996, 45  were conducted. The headquarters of the test base is at Malan, about 125 km northwest of Qinggir.

On June 13, 1996, famous Chinese explorer Yu Chunshun died while trying to walk across Lop Nur.

Water System

The rivers that feed the Lop Nur marshes are the Tarim River, Qiemo River and Konqi River.

Xiaohe Bronze Age Burial Site

The site is an oblong sand dune, from which more than 30 well-preserved mummies, buried in air-tight ox-hide bags, have been excavated. The entire Xiaohe Tomb complex contains about 330 tombs, about 160 of which have been desecrated by grave robbers.
A local hunter guided Swedish explorer and archeologist Folke Bergman to the site in 1934. An excavation project began in October 2003 by the Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute. A total of 167 tombs have been dug up since the end of 2002 and excavations have revealed hundreds of smaller tombs built in layers, as well as other precious artifacts. In 2006 more valuable archeology evidence was uncovered. A boat-shaped coffin wrapped with ox hide, contained the mummified face of a smiling young woman.