Qinghai Lake has been expanding in recent decades. Will it one day break out of the mountains and flow to the ocean?

With economic development, the tourism market has been booming in recent years, so people have begun to continuously develop natural resources and maintain the development of environmental resources.

However, when we use large natural resources, we also bring some devastating blows to us humans. This is because we humans cannot guarantee that these resources will not be destroyed. The most serious of these problems is soil erosion?

At present, the water of lakes in the world is decreasing, and the area is also shrinking, but surprisingly, there is a lake in our country that does not look like this Like other lakes, they just go with the flow. On the contrary, the lake area is getting bigger and bigger. This lake is Qinghai Lake.

The geographical location of Qinghai Lake is extremely unique.

As its name suggests, Qinghai Lake is located in Qinghai and is the largest inland lake among all the lakes known so far in my country.

Qinghai Lake covers an area of ??4,456 square kilometers and has a circumference of more than 360 kilometers. Its lake surface is 3,260 meters above sea level. If you look at it from a distance, you can find that Qinghai Lake has an oval shape as a whole.

In the entire Qinghai Lake area, you can enjoy more than 3,000 hours of sunshine per year. It can be said that the sunshine is very sufficient. However, the annual precipitation in the Qinghai Lake area is relatively small, and the seasonal changes in precipitation It is also relatively large, and the lake area has the most days of strong winds and sandstorms compared to other areas in the province. Since Qinghai Lake contains a small amount of inorganic salts, the freezing temperature of Qinghai Lake water is slightly lower than 0℃.

How was Qinghai Lake formed?

Before 200,000 to 2 million years ago, Qinghai Lake was actually a freshwater lake, and at that time the lake water could be discharged into the Yellow River through the Daotang River in the southeast, so it can also be said to be an outflow lake.

But until 130,000 years ago, due to geological changes, mountains such as the Riyue Mountains rose up one after another. They blocked the path for the water of Qinghai Lake to flow into the Yellow River. Slowly Qinghai Lake became It became an internal lake.

It sounds magical that a freshwater lake turns into a saltwater lake, but everything must have a reason. What is the reason?

Qinghai Lake itself relies on local mountain ice and snow melt water and surface runoff as supplies. In addition, the water flowing into Qinghai Lake at that time was salty, and the climate began to become dry at that time. Qinghai Lake continued to pass through The salt concentration of the evaporated lake water has also become higher and higher, so Qinghai Lake has changed from a freshwater lake to the saltwater lake we see now.

And according to the measurement of the area of ??Qinghai Lake in recent decades, it was found that the area has reached 4435.69 square kilometers. It can be said that the area of ??Qinghai Lake has increased by about 179 square kilometers in the past ten years. Qinghai is now The lake is known as the largest inland saltwater lake in my country.

Why is Qinghai continuing to expand?

Before answering this question, we need to know that before the area of ??Qinghai Lake gradually expanded over the decades, Qinghai Lake also suffered the same fate as other lakes? The water in the lake was constantly losing.

In order to solve the problem of water and soil erosion, we have begun to take a series of measures such as returning farmland to forests and grasslands, soil and water conservation, water diversion and replenishment, and accelerating the construction of surrounding ecological systems. The purpose is to delay the continued decline of the lake level. , and it is precisely because of the persistence of us humans in the past few decades that Qinghai Lake will continue to expand.

Of course, human factors are not the decisive factor. The continuous expansion of Qinghai Lake is also assisted by the local climate. Due to global warming in recent years, the glaciers in the northwest of Qinghai Lake have begun to melt, so the glaciers are melting. The water will flow into Qinghai Lake, and precipitation has been increasing in recent years, so Qinghai Lake is gradually expanding.

Will Qinghai Lake one day break out of the mountains and flow to the ocean?

Since humans have always attached great importance to environmental protection in the Qinghai Lake Basin in recent decades, and Qinghai Lake is connected to the Yellow River water system, will it one day flow out of the mountains and flow to the ocean?

The answer is definitely no. First of all, we must understand that Qinghai Lake is surrounded by mountains. It is not just a matter of imagination. To be honest, this is not a simple matter.

So far, the altitude of the water surface of Qinghai Lake is about 3200 meters to 3300 meters. Just imagine that if Qinghai Lake wants to break out of these mountains, its altitude must be higher than that of the surrounding mountains. Any of them.

The lowest altitude among the surrounding mountains is Nanshan Mountain in the south. It is reported that the altitude of Nanhai Nanshan is about 3,500 meters. If Qinghai Lake wants to break out of the mountains, the water depth of Qinghai Lake must be increased. More than 200 meters, but the current average water depth of Qinghai Lake is only about 20 meters.

This means that ten times the amount of water must be injected into Qinghai Lake to rush out of the mountains, so it will not flow out of the mountains and flow to the ocean for a long time in the future.

However, it is not ruled out that there are no accidents. If the crustal movement occurs in Qinghai Lake, causing the previously uplifted mountains to sink, then the barrier between Qinghai Lake and the Yellow River will disappear. By that time, Qinghai will It is very likely that the lake will flow into the sea and slowly turn into a freshwater lake?

This also gives us a warning. Although large natural resources are the wealth given to us by the earth, we cannot overuse them. With frequent human activities, we should make reasonable use of the wealth that nature has given us.

?Green mountains and clear waters are the golden mountains and silver mountains?! I hope everyone can be kind to nature.