Figure 1: The ancient Lop Nur Lake in the Tarim Basin.
From: The world’s earliest Aral-Sea type disaster: the decline of the Loulan Kingdom in the Tarim Basin
(a) Tarim Basin with rivers, Lop Nur (black arrow) and ancient sites (S - Sampula, Z - Zaghunluq, R – Ruoqiang, X – Xiaohe, G – Gumugou), area of irrigated farmland during the Han Dynasty1,5 indicated by grey shading; inset shows location in China. Frame in the right indicates area shown in Fig. 1b. Background map was generated with data available from the Chinese Geospatial Data Cloud using ESRI’s ArcGIS (version 10.2; http://www.esri.com/). (b) The dry Lop Nur Basin with position of pit section (black dot) and Loulan and other sites. Ancient lake extent1 indicated by red dotted line. Background map generated with ESRI’s ArcGIS (version 10.2) and Landsat data (NASA Landsat Program, 2006, Landsat ETM+ scenes 218–312 and 218–300, Orthorectified, USGS, Sioux Falls, 03/05/2006 and 04/15/2006, respectively; http://glcfapp.glcf.umd.edu:8080/esdi/index.jsp).
