Nearly 500 salt lakes were found after a recent field survey held in Tibet, Chinatibetnews.com reported.
The lakes cover an area of 6,000 square kilometers, and 220 of them are larger than one square kilometer with mineralization degree higher than 50 grams per liter.
The survey and sampling work were made by an eight-man group from Qinghai Salt Lake Institute of Chinese Academy of Science with the subject as “Investigation on changes of salt lake sources in China”.
With the highest altitude and the most abundant resources, lakes in Tibet were considered by experts to have broad prospects for exploitation.
By means of field survey, locating observation and remote sensing monitoring, experts mainly made investigation on the number, area and distribution of salt lakes covering more than one square meter in regions such as Shigatse, Ngari and Nagchu; meanwhile, they evaluated various aspects of salt lakes such as reserves, concentration, deposits, resource consumption, exploitation and construction, as well as communication and transportation, hence providing basic reference materials for making researches on the climate, environment and salt enrichment pattern of salt lakes.
According to an expert from Chinese Academy of Science, the exploitation of salt lake resources is an industry with low input and high output, compared with other chemical industries. Since salt lakes in Tibet have not entered into the large-scale development phase, experimental study is advised to carry out in order to better utilize the typical useful salt lakes; what is more, the long-term observation station is also necessary to provide useful data for further exploiting the local salt lakes.
source: Tibet Online, 29 NOV 2013
