The Manas Lake () is a
salt lake in the
Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
. It is located in the western part of the
Dzungarian Basin
The Junggar Basin () is one of the largest sedimentary basins in Northwest China. It is located in Xinjiang, and enclosed by the Tarbagatai Mountains of Kazakhstan in the northwest, the Altai Mountains of Mongolia in the northeast, and the Heav ...
, within the
Gurbantünggüt Desert
The Gurbantünggüt Desert ( kk, Құрбантұңғыт шөлі; ug, قۇربانتۈڭغۈت قۇملۇقى, Qurbantüngghüt Qumluqi; zh, s=古尔班通古特沙漠 , t=古爾班通古特沙漠, p=Gǔ'ěrbāntōnggǔtè Shāmò) occupies a l ...
. Administratively, the lake is in
Hoboksar Mongol Autonomous County
Hoboksar (), sometimes referred with the historic name Hefeng County (), is an autonomous county for Mongol people in the middle north of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Western China, it is under administration of Tacheng Prefecture. The cou ...
; the closest urban settlement is
Urho District
Orku District ( zh, s=乌尔禾区, t=烏爾禾區, p=Wū'ěrhé Qū; ug, ئورقۇ رايونى, translit=Orqu Rayoni, Ork̡u Rayoni, ) is a district within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and is under the administrative jurisdiction of t ...
of
Karamay City
Karamay is a prefecture-level city in the north of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China. The name of the city comes from the Uyghur language and means "black oil", referring to the oil fields near the city.
Karamay w ...
, some to the northwest of the lake.
The Manas Lake used to be known as the Yihehake Lake () in the past.
[
Notionally, Lake Manas is considered the end point of the Manas River, flowing from the ]Tian Shan
The Tian Shan,, , otk, 𐰴𐰣 𐱅𐰭𐰼𐰃, , tr, Tanrı Dağı, mn, Тэнгэр уул, , ug, تەڭرىتاغ, , , kk, Тәңіртауы / Алатау, , , ky, Теңир-Тоо / Ала-Тоо, , , uz, Tyan-Shan / Tangritog‘ ...
mountains. In practice, however, the river bed is usually dry where it reaches the lake (), and little river water reaches the lake.
The Manas Lake area is characterized by arid climate with hot summers; the average annual precipitation of merely , as compared to the average annual evaporation of ; which means that without an inflow of water from outside, the lake's water level can drop very quickly. Over the second half of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century, it went through the cycle of shrinking, drying up, recovering, or existing as an intermittent lake.
Geological history
According to the research by Chinese geologists, area occupied by today's Manas Lake was in the past part of a much large lake, the Old Manas Lake, which exited in the northwestern part of the Dzungarian Basin. It is believed that the Old Manas Lake was formed in the Early Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...
and existed throughout the Early Quaternary. Due to tectonic movements in the Middle Quaternary, many important rivers that used to flow to the Old Manas Lake started flowing elsewhere. The Irtysh
The Irtysh ( otk, 𐰼𐱅𐰾:𐰇𐰏𐰕𐰏, Ertis ügüzüg, mn, Эрчис мөрөн, ''Erchis mörön'', "erchleh", "twirl"; russian: Иртыш; kk, Ертіс, Ertis, ; Chinese: 额尔齐斯河, pinyin: ''É'ěrqísī hé'', Xiao'e ...
now flows toward the Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans. It spans an area of approximately and is known as the coldest of all the oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, a ...
, and the Ulungur River
The Ulungur River / Urungu River or Urungu ( mn, Өрөнгө гол, translit=Öröngö Gol, zh, c=乌伦古河, p=Wūlúngǔ hé), in its upper reaches in Mongolia known as the Bulgan River ( mn, Булган гол), is a river of China and ...
ends in the Ulungur Lake; the Maqiao River, south of Lake Manas, does not reach it either.
Study of the old alluvial fan
An alluvial fan is an accumulation of sediments that fans outwards from a concentrated source of sediments, such as a narrow canyon emerging from an escarpment. They are characteristic of mountainous terrain in arid to semiarid climates, but a ...
s and lacustrine terraces seems to indicate that the Old Manas Lake's level was at about 280 meters above the sea level
Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardise ...
.[
As the Old Manas Lake lost most of its water sources, its water level dropped in the Late Quaternary, and it split into several lakes including the Manas Lake, the Ailik Lake (which presently is the end point of the Baiyang River), and the Alan Nur.][
According to the early 20th century maps, a large lake in the region of today's Manas Lake was the Alan Nur
(, or (,][ (English abstract on p. 160)] located to the west of today's Manas Lake (); that was the lake into which the Manas River flowed.[
Earlier (in 18th-19th centuries) the Alan Nur would receive, besides the Manas, also the waters of the Hutubi River () and Santun River ().
These two rivers flow from the ]Tian Shan
The Tian Shan,, , otk, 𐰴𐰣 𐱅𐰭𐰼𐰃, , tr, Tanrı Dağı, mn, Тэнгэр уул, , ug, تەڭرىتاغ, , , kk, Тәңіртауы / Алатау, , , ky, Теңир-Тоо / Ала-Тоо, , , uz, Tyan-Shan / Tangritog‘ ...
into the Dzungarian Basin in Hutubi and Changji Counties; nowadays, they disappear in the desert a long distance away from the Manas Lake, but in the period under consideration they would merge and reach the Alan Nur.[
Even though the Manas River flowed into the Alan Nur, the lake now known as the Manas Lake existed as well; it was fed primarily by streams coming from the northern rim of the Zhungarian Basin][ (i.e., from the Saur Mountains); this is indicated by old ]alluvial fan
An alluvial fan is an accumulation of sediments that fans outwards from a concentrated source of sediments, such as a narrow canyon emerging from an escarpment. They are characteristic of mountainous terrain in arid to semiarid climates, but a ...
s still existing at the pertinent locations.[
It is believed that due to tectonic movements in the early 20th century, the earth surface around Alan Nur was rising and around Manas Lake, lowering; besides, the lower course of the Manas River was silting up with the sediment brought by the river. As a result, in 1915 the main stream of the Manas River changed its course, now flowing to the Manas Lake; however, a small branch feeding into the Alan Nur remained.][ (One can see the ]bifurcation
Bifurcation or bifurcated may refer to:
Science and technology
* Bifurcation theory, the study of sudden changes in dynamical systems
** Bifurcation, of an incompressible flow, modeled by squeeze mapping the fluid flow
* River bifurcation, the ...
point of the now-dry river beds at , with the main channel going to the north-east and entering the Manas Lake around
, while the old channel enters the former Alan Nur at
.)
Recent history
In the 1950s and early 1960s, large scale development of irrigated agriculture started in the upper and middle reaches of the Manas River (the Shihezi/Manas County
Manas County is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region under the administration of the Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture. It covers an area of and census it had a population of 170,000.
The county seat is the old town of Manas (), lo ...
region, the area where the river leaves the Tian Shan
The Tian Shan,, , otk, 𐰴𐰣 𐱅𐰭𐰼𐰃, , tr, Tanrı Dağı, mn, Тэнгэр уул, , ug, تەڭرىتاغ, , , kk, Тәңіртауы / Алатау, , , ky, Теңир-Тоо / Ала-Тоо, , , uz, Tyan-Shan / Tangritog‘ ...
and enters the Zhungarian Basin). The Manas River Irrigation District had been fully in that area by 1962; the system was designed to use up to of water per year. As a result, little water flowed in the Manas River downstream of the district, and even less reached the Manas Lake, let alone the Alan Nur.
Consequently, the Alan Nur, whose water surface still occupied the area of in the 1950s, had completely dried up by the 1960s. Now it is a bare plain of saline soil, at the elevation of 261–263 m above the sea level.[
The Manas Lake is now reached by the waters of the eponymous river only intermittently, but the lake also receives water from seasonal streams flowing from the Saur Mountains at the northern edge of the Dzungarian Basin; besides, it is fed by ground water. The Manas Lake's bed is at about 247 m above the level, and its water surface, at 253–255 m above the level.][
According to Chinese researchers, the recent history of the Manas Lake and its neighbors can be divided into two stages. From the late 1950s and until 1999 (for the Manas Lake and the Alan Nur) or 2001 (for the Ailik and the Lesser Ailik), the lakes were shrinking or drying up. Since 1999 (for the Manas and the Alan Nur) or 2001 (the two Ailiks), the lakes have entered the stage of at least partial recovery,] which (especially for the Ailiks) is related to the arrival of the Irtysh
The Irtysh ( otk, 𐰼𐱅𐰾:𐰇𐰏𐰕𐰏, Ertis ügüzüg, mn, Эрчис мөрөн, ''Erchis mörön'', "erchleh", "twirl"; russian: Иртыш; kk, Ертіс, Ertis, ; Chinese: 额尔齐斯河, pinyin: ''É'ěrqísī hé'', Xiao'e ...
water into the Baiyang River over the Irtysh–Karamay Canal.
Notes
{{reflist
Lakes of Xinjiang
Shrunken lakes