Image of the Day: Dalai Nur Lake of Inner Mongolia

It is November, and we are in the frozen interior of Nei Mongol or Inner Mongolia of China.  Before us stretches ancient shorelines of the interior playa salt basin of Dalai Nur Lake.  

Historic and prehistoric fluctuations in the size of this lake are astounding.  You can clearly see the ancient lakeshore lines extending tens of kilometers from the current shoreline.  

These are clear demarcations of many extreme variations in the local climate ... a window to past periods when the region was far wetter and likely far more lush with woodland vegetation.  The area is now arid ... and in fact hosts the thinnest river in the world, the Haolai River that empties into Dalai Nur Lake.

The ancient shorelines extend up the side of extinct volcanic hills or "plugs" that occasionally dot this bleak landscape.  During ancient times, these volcanic hills occurred as islands within the Dalai Nur "inland sea" during one of its expansion periods.  At least one such island contains important petroglyphs of wildlife long gone, although the lake and surrounding wetlands of Dalai Nur Nature Reserve still host some 160 bird species during the warm summer thaw period.
  
The name "Dalai Nur" means "scapula lake" because dalai is Mongolian for scapula -- the lake is shaped like a scapula bone -- and nur is Mongolian for lake.  

--Bruce G. Marcot

Image and text © Bruce G. Marcot, Ph.D. Research Wildlife Ecologist,
who produces the Ecology Picture of the Week website.