The Aiding Lake is just located in the center of the Turpan Basin 40 kilometers south of the Turpan city. Aiding Lake in Uygur means the Moon Lake because it is the very salty lake and produce many kinds of slat productions.Millions of tear ago it was a very huge fresh water lake.After the earth was getting more and more hot and Glacier has been receded for several hundred meters since 70s. and Now every year the glacier will recede about 8 meters and that is one of the main reason for the lake being like this now. and also the people use a lot of water for industry and agriculture. Aiding Lake is the second lowest place in the world. The stele erected to show the place I have been is 154 meters below the sea level The Aiding Lake is very important for Turpan can be likened to people's Kidney. It is the Kidney of Turpan and the whole globle.From this lake the people will know the environment of the earth is getting bad. To visit this lake is also memorable for your life!! Lying at the foot of the Qoltag Mountains on the borders of three counties(Turpan, Shanshan and Toksun), forty kilometers from the Turpan County seat, Lake Aydingkol stretches forty kilometers east-west and measures eight kilometers north-south, covering an area of 152 square kilometers. With its water level at 154.43 meters below the level of the Yellow Sea off the eastern China coast, Aydingkol is the lowest lake in China and the second lowest lake in the world after the Dead Sea. Scientists have discovered a great quantity of freshwater lake sediment and spiral shell fossils of the Pliocene epoch around the lake, showing that 10,000 years ago Aydingkol was a vast freshwater lake, a thousand times the size of the present lake. Today only the southwestern part of the lake is covered with shallow water, while the remainder of the lake has dried up, exposing a rippling salt-covered bed. Seen from afar, the lake is a large expanse of silvery white salt crystals sparkling in the sun. Looking like moonlight on a winter night, the local Uygur people call it Moon Lake. Mirages are common here, and they have aroused the curiosity of tens of thousands of people who come to explore this place each year.Since Lake Aydingkol lies very low, it is well supplied with water from melted ice and snow on the surrounding mountains and plains. In spite of this, however, the atmosphere at Lake Aydingkol is extremely dry, and hot winds blow frequently. In summer the temperature rises to fifty degrees centigrade, causing the lake water to evaporate quickly. It is estimated that annual evaporation tops 200 million cubic meters, dozens of times the volume of water the lake obtains from melted ice and snow. As agriculture and industry expand in Turpan, more water is needed and this mainly comes from melted ice and snow around. Consequently less and less water flows into Lake Aydingkol, and today water covers only twenty-two square kilometers, or one seventh of the area of the lake bed, while the water level continues to fall so that the average depth is only 0.8 meter. It is expected that Lake Aydingkol will one day totally run dry and disappear from the map. The salt content of Lake Aydingkol is so high that people have calculated that it could provide a year's supply of table salt for the entire nation of one billion people. Under the lake lie deposits of coal and petroleum, and a modern chemical works now stands on the lakeside. The largest plant in Turpan, it uses salt, alum and saltpeter from the lake as raw materials to make quality products at Iow cost for Xinjiang and other provinces and even for the world ' market.
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