Kumtagh Desert

The Kumtag Desert (Chinese: 库姆塔格沙漠; pinyin: Kùmǔtǎgé Shāmò, "kum-tag" meaning "sand-mountain" in a number of Turkic languages), is an arid landform in northwestern China, which was proclaimed as a national park in the year 2002.

The oval Tarim Basin with its central Taklamakan Desert is bounded on the north, west and south by mountains. On the east side the Kumtag is an unbroken plain about 100 miles from north to south that runs from the Taklamakan to Gansu and Mongolia. Many modern maps do not show a Kumtag in this sense which implies that the usage may be out of date.

The Kumtag Desert is a section of the Taklamakan Desert which lies east-southeast of the Desert of Lop. It is on the other side of the Kara-koshun and reaches north-eastwards as far as the vicinity of the town of Sa-chow and the lake of Kara-nor, or Kala-chi. It is bordered by Dunhuang in the east, Tian Shan in the north, and with an area of 22,800+ square kilometers. Its southern rim is marked by a labyrinth of hills, dotted in groups and irregular clusters,worn down as it were to mere fragments of their former skeletal structure. Between these and the Altyn-Tagh, intervenes a broad latitudinal valley, seamed with watercourses that come down from the foothills of the Altyn-tagh. Beside these scrubby desert plants of the usual character maintain a precarious existence. Water reaching them in some instances at intervals of years only. This part of the desert has a general slope northwest towards the relative depression of the Kara-koshun. A noticeable feature of the Kumtag is the presence of large accumulations of drift-sand, especially along the foot of the crumbling desert ranges, where it rises into dunes sometimes as much as 250 feet (76 m) in height and climbs halfway up the flanks of ranges themselves.

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