巴丹吉林沙漠沙丘、植被和湖泊演化

The formation and evolution of magedunes and lakes in Badain Jaran desert is focused by scholars for a long time. In this paper, detailed investigation was made with the Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Systems, climatological data of research region to study the evolution of magedunes, vegetation and lakes. The main conclusions are presented as follows: (1) The magedunes are mainly located in south and northeast of the desert. The density of magedunes decreases from south to north, east to west, and greatest in southeast of the desert. Most of magedunes strike NE30°~60°, and which are NE-SW and NNE-SSW directions. The distribution of magedunes’ strikes indicates that the paleowind of the desert is northwest and west wind. (2) The vegetation cover is low in the Badain Jaran Desert, but there are some well-vegetated areas in the desert, and the value of NDVI is 0.6107. In southeast of the desert, the vegetation degradated seriously from 1987 to 2000. (3) At about 2000, the total area of permanent lakes was 2231.64 hm2 (±5.9%) in southeast of Badain Jaran Desert. From 1960 to about 2000, the lakes changed as followings: in the early 30 years, the area of lakes increased, but after 1990 it decreased. When lakes were large, the toral area of lakes is 20648 hm2 in Badain Jaran Desert, much larger than that of present lakes. (4) From 1961 to 2001, the mean annual evaporation of lakes was 1039.8mm (±10%) in Badain Jaran Desert, and the difference between years was large. The monthly evaporation of lakes was mainly affected by rainfall, temperature. And it was largest in June, 140.9mm(±10%). (5) Based on water balance calculation of present lakes and old lakes in southeast of Badain Jaran Desert, the total precipitation is more than the total evaporation in this area. So it is probable that the precipitation in the lake area supplies water to the lakes, and also to groundwater in west and north part of the desert.