Xiaobiele Lake or Xiaobieletan is an

ephemeral Ephemerality (from the Greek word , meaning 'lasting only one day') is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Academically, the term ephemeral constitutionally describes a diverse assortment of things and experiences, fr ...

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much lar ...

in the southwestern

Qarhan Playa The Qarhan Playa or also misleadingly described as , is a playa in the Golmud and Dulan counties of Haixi Prefecture, Qinghai, China. Formerly a single unitary lake, it is now an expansive salt flat divided into four greater sections ( D ...

north of

Golmud Golmud, also known by various other romanizations, is a county-level city in the Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai Province, China. It is now the second-largest city in Qinghai and the third largest in the Tibetan Pl ...

in the Haixi Prefecture of

Qinghai Province Qinghai (; alternately romanized as Tsinghai, Ch'inghai), also known as Kokonor, is a landlocked province in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It is the fourth largest province of China by area and has the third smallest po ...

in northwestern China. Like the other lakes of the surrounding

Qaidam Basin The Qaidam, Tsaidam, or Chaidamu Basin is a hyperarid basin that occupies a large part of Haixi Prefecture in Qinghai Province, China. The basin covers an area of approximately , one-fourth of which is covered by saline lakes and playas. Around ...

, it is extremely

saline Saline may refer to: * Saline (medicine), a liquid with salt content to match the human body * Saline water, non-medicinal salt water * Saline, a historical term (especially US) for a salt works or saltern Places * Saline, Calvados, a commune in ...

; like the other lakes of the surrounding Bieletan subbasin, it is rich in

lithium Lithium (from el, λίθος, lithos, lit=stone) is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid ...

Names

The ''xiao'' at the beginning of the name is the

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, an ...

of the Chinese word meaning "little" or "lesser", distinguishing it from nearby Dabiele Lake ("Big" or "Greater Biele Lake"). Xiaobiele is also known as Xiaobieletan from a Chinese word used for both

beach A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shell ...

es and muddy

riverbank Riverbank or river bank may refer to: * Bank (geography), the bank of a river Places * Riverbank, California *Riverbank, former name of Bryte, California Enterprises and organizations *Riverbank Academy, a special school in Coventry, England *Ri ...

Geography

Xiaobiele Lake is an

salt lake A salt lake or saline lake is a landlocked body of water that has a concentration of salts (typically sodium chloride) and other dissolved minerals significantly higher than most lakes (often defined as at least three grams of salt per litre). ...

in the Bieletan

subbasin A subbasin or sub-basin is a structural geologic Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Mod ...

in the southwestern quarter of the

at an elevation of . It lies between Dabiele and

West Dabusun Lake West Dabusun or is an ephemeral lake northwest of Golmud in the Haixi Prefecture of Qinghai Province in northwestern China. Comprising a basin in the Qarhan Playa, it fills when meltwater floods the Golmud River, causing it to spill into subsidi ...

s. It is usually wide. Its depth usually does not exceed .

Geology

Xiaobiele's position at the south end of the playa means that its waters are relatively less influenced by the concentrated

mineral spring Mineral springs are naturally occurring springs that produces hard water, water that contains dissolved minerals. Salts, sulfur compounds, and gases are among the substances that can be dissolved in the spring water during its passage unde ...

s along the playa's northern boundary. As with Dabiele, it is nonetheless nearly saturated with

calcite Calcite is a carbonate mineral and the most stable polymorph of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). It is a very common mineral, particularly as a component of limestone. Calcite defines hardness 3 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, based on scra ...

anhydrite Anhydrite, or anhydrous calcium sulfate, is a mineral with the chemical formula CaSO4. It is in the orthorhombic crystal system, with three directions of perfect cleavage parallel to the three planes of symmetry. It is not isomorphous with t ...

halite Halite (), commonly known as rock salt, is a type of salt, the mineral (natural) form of sodium chloride ( Na Cl). Halite forms isometric crystals. The mineral is typically colorless or white, but may also be light blue, dark blue, purple, ...

, and (importantly) carnallite, which is processed to produce

potash Potash () includes various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water- soluble form.

for

potassium Potassium is the chemical element with the symbol K (from Neo-Latin '' kalium'') and atomic number19. Potassium is a silvery-white metal that is soft enough to be cut with a knife with little force. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmosp ...

-rich

fertilizer A fertilizer (American English) or fertiliser (British English; see spelling differences) is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply plant nutrients. Fertilizers may be distinct from ...

s and other uses. The Bieletan subbasin as a wholeinclusive of

Suli Suli or Sulli can refer to: * Souli, region in Epirus, Greece, and home of the Souliotes * Abu Bakr bin Yahya al-Suli (c. 880 – 946), poet and scholar at the Abbasid court * Suliformes, proposed order of seabirds * Suli Lake in China * ''Sul ...

, S. Suli, and Dabieleis also the richest source of

brine Brine is a high-concentration Solution (chemistry), solution of salt (NaCl) in water (H2O). In diverse contexts, ''brine'' may refer to the salt solutions ranging from about 3.5% (a typical concentration of seawater, on the lower end of that of ...

in China, with an estimated store of of lithium chloride. The lithium derives from

hot springs A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by c ...

located near

Mount Buka Daban Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest. Mount or Mounts may also refer to: Places * Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England * Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish ...

which now feed the Narin Gol River or Hongshui River ''Hóngshuǐ Hé'') that flows into

East Taijinar Lake East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...

. In the past, however, the springs lay within the "Kunlun" paleolake which until about 30,000 years ago produced a river which flowed north into a broad

alluvial fan An alluvial fan is an accumulation of sediments that fans outwards from a concentrated source of sediments, such as a narrow canyon emerging from an escarpment. They are characteristic of mountainous terrain in arid to semiarid climates, but a ...

feeding the "Qarhan" paleolake in the Sanhu area. Bieletan's lithium came both from deposits directly flowing into the area at the time and continuing contributions from the Urt Moron and other rivers arising in and flowing through the former alluvial plain.

References

Citations

Bibliography

* . * . * . * . * {{citation , last=Zheng , first=Mianping , author-mask=Zheng Mianping , title=An Introduction to Saline Lakes on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hFz-CAAAQBAJ , publisher=Kluwer Academic Publishers , location=Dordrecht , date=1997 , isbn=9789401154581 . Lakes of China Lakes of Qinghai Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture