Two new saltwater lakes, called Shadao Lake and Haiyan Lake, recently separated from Qinghai Lake, China's biggest inland saltwater lake.
According to statistics from remote satellite mapping, Shadao lake, northwest of Qinghai Lake, covers an area of 19.6 square kilometers. While Haiyan lake northeast of Qinghai Lake reaches an impressive 112.5 square kilometers.
Ma Haizhou, a research fellow with the Institute of Qinghai Saltwater Lake under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that there is no final explanation why the new lakes appeared beside the Qinghai Lake.
But preliminary analysis said one possible reason why the new lakes formed is that during recent years, the water level of the Qinghai Lake has been continuously sinking, causing some of the higher parts of the lake floor to become exposed forming the banks of the new lakes, while the low-land became the floor of the new lakes.
Another guess is that moving dunes formed sand banks which divided Qinghai Lake into different parts.
Covering an area of over 4,200 square kilometers, Qinghai Lake, located in the northeastern part of Qinghai-Tibet plateau, is the country's biggest salt-water lake.
(eastday.com October 26, 2001)
