The Lop Nur Salt Lake, located in the eastern part of the Tarim Basin, Xinjiang, China, has become a playa in the Quaternary. Rhombic in shape, the Lop Nur depression is mainly controlled by the NE‐striking and nearly N‐S‐striking sets of faults. Since 1995, a superlarge brine potash deposit with potash resources of 2.50times108t has been found in the Luobei subbasin in the northeastern part of the Lop Nur. We intensively studied the features and formation mechanism of faults inside the Lop Nur through satellite images, geomorphologic survey and continuous conductivity imaging and found seven subparallel graben faults formed under the action of nearly N 10° E principal compressional stress during deposition of the Lop Nur Salt Lake. These faults are up to >60 km long and 1–4 km wide and may extend downward for 1000 m or more. It is just under the action of these tensional faults that potash subbasins formed. The largest subbasin is the Luobei subbasin and the smaller ones are the Luoxi hollow, Erbei hollow and Tienan hollow. Investigation also indicates that the graben faults in the Lop Nur not only control the origin of the potash subbasins, but they themselves are also good brine reservoir structures, in which abundant potash‐rich brines are stored. Therefore, The faults had played an important role in the potash formation of the Lop Nur.
Many yellow silt layers have been identified in the Holocene sediments in the last lake of Lop Nur (playa), Xinjiang, northwestern China. Statistics of drill‐hole cores have revealed more than one hundred layers, which exhibit regularity in time sequence. Study has further verified that these yellow silt layers were deposited through eolian processes. The time‐frequency distribution diagram shows an obvious peak occurring at about 8200 a B.P., which is consistent with the dry, windy and cold climate event occurring at 8200 a in other places around the world. Therefore, this event is regarded as a response to the global climate change.
Analytic results of the mechanical and chemical composition, clay minerals, sedimentary structures and microtextures of the red earth and gravel deposits in Nankou piedmont, northwestern Beijing, China, suggest that the deposits have nothing to do with glaciation but are palaeodebris-flow deposits. During the period of their deposition, the climate was humid and hot with plentiful rainfall, and oxidation, physical and chemical weathering were rather intense.
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