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Abstract

China's Badain Jaran Sand Sea features the tallest dunes on Earth and a unique mega-dune–lake landscape. It had been explored little until the 1990s, though early scientific explorations surrounding the sand sea had begun by the early 20th century. Heated debates now focus on the desert environment, and particularly how the mega-dunes and desert lakes develop and evolve. This paper reviews the status of these debates and summarizes the supporting evidences. The environmental research mainly concerns formation and evolution of the sand sea, and its relationship with climate change. The proposed formation time ranges from the Early Pleistocene to the Holocene. Opinions vary about climate change on different time scales. The reconstructed climate change history is shorter than the sand sea's history, with the longest record extending to the Late Pleistocene. The mega-dune research focuses on sediments, dune morphology, and formation processes. It remains unclear whether the mega-dunes result primarily from wind action, control by the underlying topography, or groundwater maintenance. The sources of lake water are also debated, but there are four main hypotheses: atmospheric precipitation, groundwater from nearby areas, precipitation and snowmelt in remote areas such as the Qilian Mountains and the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, or paleowater that formed during past periods of wet climate. We believe that the sand sea deserves further study in terms of its dune geomorphology, evolution, and hydrology, and their responses to climate change. Meteorological and hydrological observations and monitoring in the sand sea are particularly necessary.