Mountain Ranges, Deserts and Landforms of Iran

History

Although Balochistan was inhabited by a variety of people, Baloch people did not migrate to the region until the 14th century. Balochistan is among the earliest human settlements in the world, and the oldest evidence of human occupation in it is dated to the Paleolithic era. Evidence includes hunting camps, lithic scatter, and chipped and flaked stone tools. The earliest settled villages in the region date to the ceramic Neolithic (c. 7000–6000 BCE) and include the site of Mehrgarh in the Kachi Plain, which may make Balochistan the oldest civilisation in the world.

These villages expanded in size during the subsequent Chalcolithic when interaction was amplified. This involved the movement of finished goods and raw materials, including chank shell, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and ceramics.

Climate

The hottest land surface on Earth recorded by the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer installed on NASA's Aqua satellite from 2003 to 2010 was in Dasht-e Lut, with land surface temperatures reaching 70.7 °C (159.3 °F) in 2005, although the air temperature at that time could have been anywhere from 30 to 54 °C (86 to 129 °F). The precision of these measurements was between 0.5 K and 1 K. In 2019, authors reported a land surface temperature of 80.83 °C (177.49 °F), based on newer MODIS data.

As of 2020, there are no permanent weather stations in Dasht-e Lut, which makes the exact climate uncertain. Based on neighboring stations, Dasht-e Lut likely receives less than 30 millimetres (1.2 in) of precipitation a year.

Description

Iran is climatically part of the Afro-Asian belt of deserts, which stretches from Mauritania all the way to Mongolia.

Iran's geography consists of a plateau surrounded by mountains and divided into drainage basins. Dasht-e Lut is one of the largest of these drainage basins, 480 kilometers (300 mi) long and 320 kilometers (200 mi) wide.

The area of the desert is about 51,800 square kilometres (20,000 sq mi), the largest in Iran after Dasht-e Kavir. During the spring wet season, water briefly flows down from the Kerman mountains, but it soon dries up, leaving behind only rocks, sand, and salt.

The eastern part of Dasht-e Lut is a low plateau covered with salt flats with lowest elevations around 110 m above sea level (30.398609 N, 58.493041 E).

Climate and structure

Dasht-e Kavir has an arid climate with little precipitation. However, there is usually some rainfall in winter, as well as the mountains that surround it, provide plenty of runoff—enough to create vast seasonal lakes, marshlands and playas. Daytime and nighttime temperatures can vary by as much as 70 °C (130 °F) over the course of a year. The weather can get quite cold during the nighttime in winter, routinely dropping to below 0 °C (32 °F) in some areas.

The desert soil is covered with sand and pebbles; there are marshes, seasonal lakes and seasonal river beds. The high temperatures and low humidity cause extreme vaporization, which leaves the marshes and mud grounds with large crusts of salt.

Geography

It is one of three ranges in the mountain ranges system of the province. The range's peaks are 2,000–3,000 metres (6,600–9,800 ft) in elevation.

Mirani Dam across the Dasht River forms a reservoir in the range, to provide irrigation water in the region and drinking water for the city of Gwadar.

Geology

Geologically, the Kopet Dag Range is made chiefly of Lower Cretaceous sedimentary rocks with a smaller portion of Jurassic rocks in the southeastern parts. The mountains were formed in the Miocene and the Pliocene during the Alpine orogeny. As the Tethys Sea was closed and the Arabian plate collided with the Iranian plate and was pushed against it and with the clockwise movement of the Eurasian plate towards the Iranian plate and their final collision, the Iranian plate was pressed against the Turan Platform. This collision folded the entire rocks that had been deposited in this geosyncline or basin from the Jurassic to the Miocene and formed the Kopet Dag Mountains.