Xiaobiele Lake or Xiaobieletan is an

ephemeral Ephemerality (from the Greek word , meaning 'lasting only one day') is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Academically, the term ephemeral constitutionally describes a diverse assortment of things and experiences, fr ...

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

in the southwestern

Qarhan Playa The Qarhan Playa or also misleadingly described as , is a playa in the Golmud and Dulan counties of Haixi Prefecture, Qinghai, China. Formerly a single unitary lake, it is now an expansive salt flat divided into four greater sections ( Dab ...

north of

Golmud Golmud, also known by various other romanizations, is a county-level city in the Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai Province, China. It is now the second-largest city in Qinghai and the third largest in the Tibetan Pl ...

in the

Haixi Prefecture Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (; mn, ᠬᠠᠶᠢᠰᠢ ᠶᠢᠨ ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠲᠥᠪᠡᠳ ᠦᠨᠳᠦᠰᠦᠲᠡᠨ ᠦ ᠥᠪᠡᠷᠲᠡᠭᠡᠨ ᠵᠠᠰᠠᠬᠤ ᠵᠧᠦ; bo, མཚོ་ནུབ་� ...

Qinghai Province Qinghai (; alternately romanized as Tsinghai, Ch'inghai), also known as Kokonor, is a landlocked province in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It is the fourth largest province of China by area and has the third smallest pop ...

in northwestern China. Like the other lakes of the surrounding Qaidam Basin, it is extremely saline; like the other lakes of the surrounding Bieletan subbasin, it is rich in

lithium Lithium (from el, λίθος, lithos, lit=stone) is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid ...

Names

The ''xiao'' at the beginning of the name is the

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally writte ...

romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...

of the

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

word meaning "little" or "lesser", distinguishing it from nearby

Dabiele Lake Dabiele Lake, also known by other names, is an ephemeral lake in the southwestern Qarhan Playa north of Golmud in the Haixi Prefecture of Qinghai Province in northwestern China. It is fed by the Tuolahai and Qingshui Rivers from the Kunlun Moun ...

("Big" or "Greater Biele Lake"). Xiaobiele is also known as Xiaobieletan from a Chinese word used for both

beach A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc sh ...

es and muddy riverbanks.

Geography

Xiaobiele Lake is an

salt lake in the Bieletan subbasin in the southwestern quarter of the

at an elevation of . It lies between Dabiele and West Dabusun Lakes. It is usually wide. Its depth usually does not exceed .

Geology

Xiaobiele's position at the south end of the playa means that its waters are relatively less influenced by the concentrated mineral springs along the playa's northern boundary. As with Dabiele, it is nonetheless nearly saturated with calcite,

anhydrite Anhydrite, or anhydrous calcium sulfate, is a mineral with the chemical formula CaSO4. It is in the orthorhombic crystal system, with three directions of perfect cleavage parallel to the three planes of symmetry. It is not isomorphous with the ...

halite Halite (), commonly known as rock salt, is a type of salt, the mineral (natural) form of sodium chloride ( Na Cl). Halite forms isometric crystals. The mineral is typically colorless or white, but may also be light blue, dark blue, purple, p ...

, and (importantly)

carnallite Carnallite (also carnalite) is an evaporite mineral, a hydrated potassium magnesium chloride with formula KMgCl3·6(H2O). It is variably colored yellow to white, reddish, and sometimes colorless or blue. It is usually massive to fibrous with rare ...

, which is processed to produce

potash Potash () includes various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form.

for

potassium Potassium is the chemical element with the symbol K (from Neo-Latin ''kalium'') and atomic number19. Potassium is a silvery-white metal that is soft enough to be cut with a knife with little force. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmosph ...

-rich

fertilizer A fertilizer (American English) or fertiliser (British English; see spelling differences) is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply plant nutrients. Fertilizers may be distinct from ...

s and other uses. The Bieletan subbasin as a wholeinclusive of Suli, S. Suli, and Dabieleis also the richest source of brine

in China, with an estimated store of of

lithium chloride Lithium chloride is a chemical compound with the formula Li Cl. The salt is a typical ionic compound (with certain covalent characteristics), although the small size of the Li+ ion gives rise to properties not seen for other alkali metal chlorid ...

. The lithium derives from hot springs located near Mount Buka Daban which now feed the

Narin Gol River The Narin Gol River (), sometimes spelled Narin-Gol River, also known as Narenguole River, or Nalenggele River, is an inland river in Qinghai Province of China, located in the Qaidam Basin, with a length of 435 kilometres, a catchment area of ...

Hongshui River The Hongshui River is a major river in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in Southern China. It is one of the main rivers in the basin of the Xi River, which in its turn is one of the main tributaries of the Pearl River. Because it flows thr ...

''Hóngshuǐ Hé'') that flows into East Taijinar Lake. In the past, however, the springs lay within the "Kunlun"

paleolake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much larger ...

which until about 30,000 years ago produced a river which flowed north into a broad

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 ...

feeding the "Qarhan" paleolake in the Sanhu area. Bieletan's lithium came both from deposits directly flowing into the area at the time and continuing contributions from the Urt Moron and other rivers arising in and flowing through the former alluvial plain.

References

Citations

Bibliography

* . * . * . * . * {{citation , last=Zheng , first=Mianping , author-mask=Zheng Mianping , title=An Introduction to Saline Lakes on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hFz-CAAAQBAJ , publisher=Kluwer Academic Publishers , location=Dordrecht , date=1997 , isbn=9789401154581 . Lakes of China Lakes of Qinghai Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture