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Environmental Change Recorded By Historical Documents In The Southern Margin Of Taklimakan Desert

Posted on:2014-12-08Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:J ZhangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2250330398981976Subject:Physical geography
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The southern margin of Taklimakan Desert is located in the south of Tarim Basin inXinjiang, on the north of Kunlun Mountain, on the west of Pamirs plateau, and reacheseastward to Lop Nor Region gradually. This region belongs to the “Silk Road” in the south ofXinjiang in history, many ancient cities and ancient ruins are buried by the desert in thedifferent historical stages. The region is the core area of the arid zones in China with the lowerrainfall, larger evaporation capacity, more windy sand and sandstorm days. Meanwhile, it isthe sensitive ecological fragile region, too. The environmental change in the southern marginof Taklimakan Desert is a symbol for that of all the area in Tarim Basin and the surroundingmountainous regions.Desertification and climate change are the current two major problems in the world. Theresearch of the regional climate change is an important way to understand the global climatechange. Especially in the arid desert regions, they are more sensitive to the change of climateand the environment. The research of the environmental change of the southern margin ofTaklimakan Desert will help us a lot for the environment changes in Xinjiang, and even in theentire arid zones.The climate change research is mostly focus on the proxy indexes of paleoclimate andpaleoenvironment information carrier, and reconstructs the climate and environment. Theseinformation carriers mainly include ice cores, tree ring, deep-sea cores, coral, varve clay, loess-paleosol, peat, cave carbonate and historical documents,etc. Giving priority to the historicaldocument method, adding with the archaeological method, taking the rivers, traffics, ancientcities as the main line, on the basis of read and analysis of a larger number of documentalinformation, this article looks for the evidences of the ancient ruins on climate andenvironment change, analyzes the climate and environment change process in the southernmargin of Taklimakan Desert.(1) The ancient channels, traffic roads and towns are the evidences to record the desertclimate environmental changes. The climate change in the south margin of Taklimakan Desertrecorded by historical documents coincides with that in Xinjiang, and the trend of the temperature change curve in China in recent five thousand years.(2) After Qin and Han Dynasties, the temperature change in the Desert southern region isfrequent, but the dry weather has been prevailing in that region, there are some relatively wetperiods between the dry periods. The temperature change is closer to the modern after Sui andTang Dynasties, but the change periods of wet and dry cycles get shorter, and the dry periodsare still in the dominant position. The periods of Han and Tang dynasties are the two mostprosperous period of climate and environment in the southern region of Taklimakan Desert.(3) The desertification process in historical period mainly occur in the oasis areas in themiddle and lower reaches of rivers where is located in the inside desert. The formation of theLop Nor ruin group is mainly due to the draught-up of rivers, and Hotan ruin group is mainlydue to the change of rivers course. The change of the Silk Road is mainly owing to the rivercourse’s change. Moreover, the desert southern margin is continuously to expand to the south,not the whole desert move southward.(4) The impacts of human activities on the environment cannot be ignored. Especially inthe arid desert region the update ability of vegetation is poor. In order to prevent the trafficroads from moving southward in the southern margin of the desert, the most important way isto reduce the desertification process.(5) From the historical period, the drought climate and environment have trendedgradually to be stabile in the southern margin of Taklimakan Desert, but there are still somesmall scale of fluctuations from the dry and wet to the warm and cool. Even though thetemperature change synchronizes with the global change, the humidity change does notchange obviously. After the Little Ice Age, on a century time scale, the climatic pattern isexpressed as the continuous dry and warm.
Keywords/Search Tags:Southern margin of Taklimakan Desert, historical document, climate, environment
PDF Full Text Request
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