A joint scientific expedition team consisted of 15 experts and scholars from Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Chinese Academy of Forestry, Gansu Desert Control Research Institute as well as Lanzhou University has successfully completed an overall scientific expedition to Kumtagh desert, the eighth largest desert in China, and safely returned to Dunhuang. This is the first of this kind successfully done by Chinese experts in desert science circles by traversing the desert.

Having collected and made some 50 animal and plants samples, over 2,000 geological samples as well as gathered more than 10,000 pieces of original data, the joint scientific expedition team has basically found out the living and inhabiting patterns of wild bactrian camel, the first-grade wildlife under state protection, discovered the world's only existing "feather-shaped" dune and preliminarily found out the morphological characteristics and the forming mechanism of it, thus ending the history that the research on dune's morphology done by Chinese experts in desert science circles largely depended on remote sensing images and satellite images.

The team also found two stratigraphic columns of great scientific value. The analysis of them could solve the tough questions such as the forming and evolution process of Kumtagh desert, the change of paleoenvironment as well as the changes of ancient Shule River that puzzled Chinese scholars in desert science circles; and provided crucial scientific evidences to the research on the climatic changes in northwest arid regions caused by the rising of Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, the relations between the formation and evolution of Kumtagh desert and the environmental variation of Lop Nor.

By ways of on-the-spot exploration and sampling test over satellite images, experts corrected the results of satellite images and finally released the most accurate area of Kumtagh desert, the most precise data by Chinese scientists.

Kumtagh desert carries the meaning of "sand mountain" in local Uygur language. The desert has Lop Nor in Tarim Basin, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to its west, Dunhuang city in Gansu Province to its east, eastern part of Tianshan Mountains to its north and Arjin Mountain to its south. The topography here is various, the wind-sediment landform and form of dunes diversified. Apart from Yadan topography, trellis dune, barchan, honeycomb dune, pyramidal dune, star dune and linear dune, the unique feather-shaped dune can also be found here. In consideration to the extremely arid climate, deep and thick sand bed, little vegetation and high mobility of dunes there, Kumtagh desert suffers the harshest natural condition in the arid regions in northwest China.

(People's Daily September 27, 2005)