This is also known as a ‘gravel desert’, ‘gobi sand beach’ and ‘gobi desert’. In Mongolian, ‘gobi’ means a stony desert where vegetation cannot grow. It is a common landform in arid regions. On depositional plains or alluvial fans, the grains of sand on the surface can easily be blown away by strong aeolian erosion, leaving large gravels covering the hard surface and forming a large gravel beach. Only sparse alkali-tolerant grasses and shrubs can survive. In China, gobi can be found in northwestern Inner Mongolia, the margins of the Tarim and Junggar Basins in Xinjiang Province and the Qaidam Basin in Qinghai Province (Fig. 20).
Gobi landscape – Xinjiang Province (after Dong Zhibao)
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(2020). Gobi Landscape. In: Chen, A., Ng, Y., Zhang, E., Tian, M. (eds) Dictionary of Geotourism. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2538-0_941
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