Facts about the Tak­la­makan Desert:
— the sec­ond largest mobile sand desert in the world, approx­i­mate­ly 85% of which con­sists of mobile sand dunes.
— on the out­skirts of the Tak­la­makan, sig­nif­i­cant areas are occu­pied by salt marsh­es.
— rivers flow­ing from the Kun­lun pen­e­trate into the Tak­la­makan for 100–200 km, grad­u­al­ly dry­ing up in the sands.
— the depth of ground­wa­ter in the depres­sions of the relief (with­in the ancient deltas and old rivers) is 3–5 m, they are usu­al­ly dif­fi­cult for plants to access.
— the cli­mate is sharply con­ti­nen­tal, with an insignif­i­cant (less than 50 mm per year) amount of pre­cip­i­ta­tion.
— in 2008, dur­ing an episode of win­ter storms in Chi­na, the Tak­la­makan was com­plete­ly cov­ered for the first time in the his­to­ry of obser­va­tions with a thin lay­er of snow, reach­ing 4 cm, with a tem­per­a­ture of ‑26.1 °C.
— in the windi­est areas, sand dunes move an aver­age of 20 m per year; there­fore, bridges (viaducts) have been built in such areas to allow sand to pass under­neath them, and trains and rail­ways are less exposed to sand­storms.