- Desert climate
- Interesting finds made by scientists
- Water springs and fauna of the Gobi
- Video
The Gobi is the largest desert in Asia: its length is 1600 km, width is 800 km, but in general it covers an area of about 1.3 million square meters. kilometers. This puts it in third place among the greatest deserts in the world: the first two are occupied by the Sahara (about 9 million square kilometers) and the Arabian Desert (2.33 million square kilometers). Looking at the geographical map, you can see that the Gobi Desert is located in the very center of the mainland, on the territory of Mongolia and China. From the east it is bordered by the Altai and Tien Shan ridges, from the west - by the North China plateau. The Yellow River flows along the southern borders of the Gobi, and in the north it gradually turns into the endless Mongolian steppes.
The word "gobi" in translation from Mongolian means "waterless land": this is how the Mongols call all arid areas. Geographically, the huge space is divided into several parts, each of which has its own name, depending on the geographical location: Mongolian Gobi, Trans-Altai Gobi, Gashun Gobi, Dzungaria, Alashan.
Desert climate
The climatic conditions in the desert are very harsh - this is the most sharply continental place on our planet. The annual range of temperature parameters of the Gobi is extremely large: in summer it can be unbearably hot (up to + 40 ° C) in most of it, while in winter frosts are comparable to those in Siberia (+ 40 ° C). Constantly blowing dry winds carry many tons of sand from place to place. Thanks to this, in the middle of the last century, huge cemeteries of many varieties of prehistoric dinosaurs were discovered here, the fossilized remains of which are still found in the Nemegetin depression: you can literally step on them.
The conditions of survival so difficult for people for many centuries made the Gobi the border that defines the edges of the ecumene (i.e. the inhabited world). But man has always been attracted by unexplored territories, which in his thoughts he made the location of mysterious countries and peoples. The Gobi did not escape this fate. There is a Chinese myth about the "land of immortals" living in the very center of the Shamo Desert (the ancient Chinese name for the Gobi). There, many esotericists "placed" the Atlantean colonies, allegedly hiding in the inaccessible depths of the desert after the death of their mythical civilization, as well as the incomprehensible Shambhala.
Interesting finds made by scientists
Scientists were attracted to these lands no less. Many of them have been here: the famous Venetian Marco Polo, the famous Russian explorer of Asia Nikolai Przhevalsky, orientalist Yu. N. Roerich, as well as the Polish traveler Maciej Kuchinsky. Each of them left a description of their travels in books and diary entries.
A great contribution to the study of the Gobi was made by the Russian geographer, General Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov, who discovered the ancient settlement of Khara-Khoto ("black city") - the center of culture of the Tangut people. The ruins of this city, known from the first half of the 11th century, were discovered by an expedition under his leadership in 1907-1909. To get to it, the travelers had to overcome many difficulties, until they finally stumbled upon the remains of an ancient road that led them to the ruins of Hara-Khoto.
Bridged by the sands of the desert, the dead fortress kept many mysteries. Among the most interesting finds made on its territory was the Tangut-Chinese dictionary discovered by P. K. Kozlov in the ancient library. This helped scientists to decipher the many written sources of the Tangut culture. Most of them, as well as many artifacts found by Kozlov's expedition, are now kept in the funds of the Hermitage Museum.
However, the Gobi landscape is not so lifeless and harsh everywhere. For the Trans-Altai, Dzungar and East Mongolian parts of the Gobi, not only sand dunes, which are usually understood by the word "desert", are characteristic. A significant area of its "landscape designer" named Nature allotted for salt marshes, clay takyrs, rocky soil - hamadas. Here and there they are interspersed with forbs of flowering steppe and saxaul thickets.
Water springs and fauna of the Gobi
There are no large permanent bodies of water on the territory of the desert, with the exception of the already mentioned Yellow River, which limits it from the south. But nevertheless, due to the fact that the level of subsoil waters here is quite high, there are rarely sources of the purest fresh water. This is the main value, a symbol of life for all desert inhabitants. Sometimes they are of natural origin, but more often their appearance is a consequence of human work. It is around them that oases are formed, in which not only people live, but also many wild animals - argali, kulans, saigas. In addition, the rarest species that do not meet anywhere else on earth (the so-called endemics) still live here: the wild bactrian camel Bactrian and the Gobi brown bear - "Mazalai".
Like most deserts, the Gobi continues to expand, gradually displacing all living things. To stop this process, the government of China is currently taking measures to implement a project called the "Green Wall of China": residents of the country's arid regions, under the guidance of specialists, clear the land of sand and plant trees on it.
