Gurbantunggut Desert in xinjiang

Gurbantnggt Desert is the second largest desert and the biggest fixed and semi-fixed desert according to the area in China, located in the center of Junggar Basin east of the Manas River and south of the Ulungur River The desert, at an altitude of 300-600m, has an area of about 48,800km2, and there is abundant water source.

The annual precipitation in the desert is 70-150mm; the desert is the largest fixed and semi-fixed desert in China with most part of the desert constituted by fixed and semi -fixed sand dunes, accounting for 97% of the entire desert area. The vegetation coverage on fixed sand dunes is 40-50%, and 15-25% on semi-fixed sand dunes, so it is a good winter meadow which contains abundant plant species of over one hundred, and the floral element is at the transition from Central Asia to the central desert in Asia.

Central Asia desert vegetation flora dominates in the western and central desert with the wide distribution of Haloxylon Persicum, Haloxylon, Santolina Schrenk, Artemisia Stelleriana, Ep dra distachya, Carex Physodes, and a variety of ephemeral plants Haloxylon Wood in Ganjiahu Nature Reserve located in the western edge of the desert, is the only nature reserve built for desert vegetation in China with an area of thousands of hectares. The distribution area of Haloxylon in the desert reaches 1 million hm, forming a “desert jungle” on the ancient lacustrine plain and the deltas at the downstream of rivers.

The sand of the desert mainly comes from the fluvial sand of rivers on the northern slope of Tianshan Mountains. The most representative type of sand dunes in the desert is sand ridge, which covers over 50% of the entire area. The plane modality of the sand ridges is dendritic with the length from hundreds of meters up to ten kilometers, and the height increasing from about 10m in the north to about 50m in the south, Sand ridges are arranged roughly in northsouth orientation in central and northern desert, and northwest-southeast orientation in the southeast of the desert.

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