A salt desert is also known as a salt marsh mud desert. It is a landscape where the surface is covered with salt and saline soil. In arid areas covered by large amounts of salt, saline groundwater rises to the surface along capillary pores. The water evaporates rapidly, and the salts accumulate on the surface, forming a salt desert. Salt deserts also form when salt lakes dry to expose the bottom. Only a few salt-tolerant plants can grow in salt deserts, which are barren areas with poor soil. There are large areas of salt deserts in the central Qaidam Basin, Qinghai Province (Fig. 4).
Salt desert landscape – Lop Nur, Xinjiang Province. (After Dong Zhibao)
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(2020). Salt Desert 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_2129
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2538-0_2129
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