The desert is vast, the Nile Delta is now, and the Tarim is broken
The sky suddenly became overcast, and the flow of the Tarim River was suddenly interrupted. This is the southern part of Xinjiang in 1972, and a tall embankment stands out against the blue sky and white clouds.
On the other side of it is a sparkling water surface that flows into the Daxihaizi Reservoir. This reservoir is known as the wonder of the world, and the river is the mother river of the people of southern Xinjiang, the Tarim River.
On both sides of the reservoir, there are many Zhendian and Shubian Tunken Army, scattered from east to west Aksu City, Shaya County, Kuqa County and Luntai County, as well as 15 farms belonging to the First and Second Agricultural Divisions.
The area of this basin has reached 1.02 million square kilometers, and 20.44 million acres of irrigated farmland have been irrigated. However, a fortuitous event in the winter of 1972 changed all that.
The soldiers of the Corps were taking advantage of the snowy winter break to cut reed poles and repair their houses with sweat and rain, when they suddenly noticed that the outlet of the Daxihaizi Reservoir had become very strange, and the gurgling water was slowly cutting off.
At this moment, the crowd of onlookers were stunned, after all, the end point of the Tarim River, Taitema Lake, is still more than 300 kilometers away from the reservoir.
The Nile Delta Satellite** reveals a surprising truth: despite the fact that the Taklamakan Desert is located north of the Tarim River, the Nile River still gives birth to the world-famous Nile Delta.
The Nile Delta is fanned or triangular in shape, with Cairo, the capital of Egypt, to the south, Port Said to the east, and the historic city of Alexandria to the west. The geometry of the entire Nile Delta, with its winding coastline is 230 kilometers long, about 160 kilometers long from north to south, 250 kilometers wide from east to west, and about 2The 40,000 square kilometres, dry and rainless Mediterranean climate makes it an important sugar beet and long-staple cotton producer in Egypt.
However, before entering the desert, the amount of water in the Nile changed. According to the General History of Egypt, the Nile has three main tributaries, namely the Kagera, the Blue Nile, and the White Nile.
Next, we analyze the source of these three tributaries and the climate of the regions through which they pass to calculate the amount of water in the Nile in a normal year.
The Blue Nile and the White Nile, together shape the Nile. The Blue Nile, which originates in Lake Tana and passes through the Abayi River, is home to the world-famous Tis Essat waterfall.
And in Khartoum, it joins the White Nile to form the main body of the Nile. According to Ancient Egyptian Civilization on the Nile, the Blue Nile has an average annual flow of 52 billion cubic meters in Khartoum.
During the flood season, the Blue Nile contributes 68% of the water and the White Nile 10%. During the dry season, the White Nile has 83% of its volume, surpassing the Blue Nile's 17%.
Whether it's flooding or dry periods, the Blue Nile and the White Nile have their own way of breathing life into the Nile.
The climate of the Tarim River basin is similar to that of the Nile. The Ethiopian plateau is one of the birthplaces of the Nile River and has distinct wet and dry seasons. In summer, the low pressure zone between North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, the southeast trade winds blowing from the southern Indian Ocean, and the hot and humid air currents from the Gulf of Guinea form the rainy season from July to September, with an average annual rainfall of 1,000 to 2,000 mm.
The northwestern part of the East African Plateau is influenced by the warm and humid air currents of Guinea, and the equatorial location has high solar radiation, with an average annual rainfall of 1,200 to 1,300 mm.
Khartoum, near the Sahara Desert, receives little rainfall, with only 200 millimeters. In contrast, the Tarim River, although smaller, relies on the melting of snow-capped mountains to provide water, with a maximum volume of 30700 million cubic meters.
Judging from the climate data, the water volume of the Tarim River is far less than that of the Daxihaizi Reservoir, which has been withdrawn from agricultural irrigation. Surrounded by high mountains and far from the ocean, only 200,500 mm of rain fell in the mountains, and only 50,80 mm on the edges of the basins.
With evaporation at a high level, the Tarim River is unable to replenish its water with rainfall. Therefore, after passing through an arid desert, nature cannot give birth to a fertile delta.
Next, we will try to explain the reasons from the perspective of the Sahara Desert and the Taklamakan Desert. The Sahara Desert is bordered by the Atlantic coast in the west, the Red Sea in the east, the Atlas Mountains in the north, the Sudan Plain in the south, about 5,600 kilometers from east to west, 1,500 2,000 kilometers from north to south, with an area of 9.6 million square kilometers, accounting for 32 of the total area of the African continent.
It is divided into Western Sahara, the Central Plateau and the Eastern Desolate Zone, and its texture is composed of stony deserts, gravel deserts and deserts, so it is highly permeable. The Taklamakan Desert, although it accounts for 47 of the total desert area of our country, of which 85 are mobile dunes, because of the strong winds, it has moved south by 30 meters in the past 1,000 years, and the height of the sand dunes is generally more than 50 meters.