Major Deserts of the World

Gobi Desert

The Gobi is a large desert region in China and southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altay Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Tibetan Plateau to the southwest, and by the North China Plain to the southeast. The Gobi is made up of several distinct ecological and geographic regions, based on variations in climate and topography. This desert is Asia's largest.

The Gobi is most notable in history as part of the great Mongol Empire, and as the location of several important cities along the Silk Road.

Geography
The Gobi measures over 1500 kilometers from southwest to northeast and 800 km from north to south. The desert is widest in the west, along the line joining the Baghrash Kol and the Lop Nor (87°-89° east). It occupies an arc of land 1,295,000 square kilometers (500,000 mi²) in area, making it one of the largest deserts in the world, and Asia's largest. Much of the Gobi is not sandy but is covered with bare rock.

The Gobi has several alternative Chinese names. In its broadest definition, the Gobi includes the long stretch of desert and semidesert country extending from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° east, to the Greater Khingan Mountains, 116°-118° east, on the border of Manchuria; and from the foothills of the Altay, Sayan, and Yablonoi mountain ranges on the north to the Kunlun Shan, Altun Shan, and Qilian shan ranges, which form the northern edges of the Tibetan Plateau, on the south.

A relatively large area on the east side of the Greater Khingan range, between the upper waters of the Songhua (Sungari) and the upper waters of the Liao-ho, is also reckoned to belong to the Gobi by conventional usage. On the other hand, geographers and ecologists prefer to regard the western area of the Gobi region (as defined above), the basin of the Tarim in Xinjiang and the desert basin of Lop Nor and Hami (Kumul) as forming a separate and independent desert, called the Taklamakan.

The Nemegt Basin in the northwestern part of the Gobi Desert (in Mongolia) is famous for its dinosaur fossil treasures.

The Gobi desert is a cold desert, and it is not uncommon to see frost and occasionally snow on its dunes. Besides being quite far north, it is also roughly 900 meters (2,953 ft) above sea level, which further contributes to its low temperatures. An average of approximately 194 millimeters (7.6 in) of rain falls per year in the Gobi.