Lopnuur (Lake)

Japanese: ロブ･ノール[湖]（英語表記）Lopnuur

A salt lake located at the eastern end of the Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. During the Han dynasty, it was called the "Salt Lake" or the "Puchang Sea," and it was thought that its water passed underground and became the Yellow River. Since the end of the 19th century, explorations by Hedin, Stein, and others have suggested that the lake moved due to changes in the course of the Tarim River and the Peacock River, which flowed into the lake, and it was called the "wandering lake." However, today, a theory has been proposed that the lake's area does not move beyond a certain small area. Since the 1960s, the amount of water withdrawn from the two river basins for irrigation has increased sharply, causing a sharp decline in the amount of water flowing into the lake, and today all that can be seen is a desert covered in salt crusts.

Source: Heibonsha World Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition Information

Japanese:

中国，新疆ウイグル(維吾爾)自治区タリム(塔里木)盆地東端にあった塩湖。漢代，〈塩沢〉，〈蒲昌海〉などと呼ばれ，その水が地下を経て黄河になると考えられた。19世紀末以来のヘディンやスタインらによる探検の結果，湖に入るタリム川，孔雀河の河道変化のために移動するとされ，〈さまよえる湖〉といわれたが，今日では湖域の移動は一定小範囲を超えるものではないという説が出されている。1960年代以降，両河川流域での灌漑による取水量の急増で湖への流入量が激減し，今日では塩殻におおわれた砂漠をみるのみである。

出典　株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典第２版について　情報

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