{"id":124845,"date":"2026-09-17T13:50:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=124845"},"modified":"2026-09-17T13:50:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:20:46","slug":"taklamakan-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/taklamakan-desert\/","title":{"rendered":"Taklamakan Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Taklamakan Desert Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For decades, China has been planting trees and other vegetation around the edges of the Taklamakan Desert, one of the world&#8217;s largest and driest deserts, in an effort to stop desertification and hold back shifting sand.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Taklamakan Desert<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Taklamakan Desert, located in <\/span><b>southwest Xinjiang <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in <\/span><b>northwest China<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, is <\/span><b>one of the world\u2019s largest sandy deserts.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It sits right in the <\/span><b>middle of the largest inland basin in China<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014the <\/span><b>Tarim Basin.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The desert area extends about 960 km from west to east, and it has a maximum width of some 420 km and a total area of approximately 320,000 sq.km.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the <\/span><b>world\u2019s second-largest shifting-sand desert,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>85%<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of its total area is <\/span><b>composed of crescent-shaped dunes.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is <\/span><b>flanked by two towering mountain ranges<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8211;<\/span><b>Tien Shan to the north<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><b>Kunlun mountain ranges to the south.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It also has the <\/span><b>Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(ancient Mount Imeon) <\/span><b>to the west<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and the famed <\/span><b><a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/gobi-desert\/\" target=\"_blank\">Gobi Desert<\/a> to the east.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is a <\/span><b>gradual transition to the Lop Nur basin in the east<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">; in the south and west, between the sandy desert and the mountains, lies a band of sloping desert lowland composed of pebble-detritus deposits.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The place has a <\/span><b>typical continental climate<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with strong gusts of wind, very little precipitation, and a significant shift in temperature from daytime to nighttime and vice versa.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>continuously shifting nature of the sand <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in the desert has <\/span><b>extended Taklamakan<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to <\/span><b>about 100 km southward<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> during the last thousand years.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are also<\/span><b> small mountain ranges <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in the desert as well as the <\/span><b>Tarim River <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that flows through its Northern edge.\u00a0 <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>News: <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.moneycontrol.com\/science\/you-may-think-planting-billions-of-trees-is-good-for-the-planet-china-s-desert-experiment-shows-why-it-s-not-that-simple-article-14024059.html#google_vignette\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><b>MC<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taklamakan Desert is located in southwest Xinjiang in northwest China. Read more about Taklamakan Desert, Location, Country, Area, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":124948,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,10305,22,23],"class_list":["post-124845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","tag-prelims-pointers","tag-taklamakan-desert","tag-upsc-current-affairs","tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","no-featured-image-padding"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124845"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124914,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124845\/revisions\/124914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}