Lop Nur

Series of shallow salt lakes with shifting boundaries at the eastern end of the Taklimakan Desert, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, northwest China. The Venetian traveller Marco Polo visited Lop Nur, then a single lake of considerable extent, in about 1273. The area is used for atomic tests.

Lop Nur lies at an altitude of 795 m/2,608 ft. It formerly received the waters of the Tarim River and is now more of a salty marsh than a lake. Lop Nur was first mapped by the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin from 1895 to 1896, but investigations have shown that its limits are constantly changing. It was the site of the first Chinese atomic test in 1964 and has since become a permanent atomic-testing ground.