The Lut Desert (Persian: دشت لوت, written in the Persian language as Dasht-e Lut, which means "Plain of Emptiness") is a desert with large areas of salt flats and sand dunes located in the Kerman and Sistan-Baluchestan provinces of Iran. It is the 33rd-largest desert in the world and was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List on July 17, 2016.
The name comes from the Persian words "Lut," meaning "bare or empty," and "dasht," meaning "plain."
The sand's surface has reached temperatures as high as 70.7 °C (159.3 °F), which is the highest recorded temperature on land.
Description
Iran is part of a large desert area that stretches from Mauritania to Mongolia. The country's geography includes a plateau surrounded by mountains and divided into areas where water flows and drains. Dasht-e Lut is one of the largest of these drainage areas, measuring 480 kilometers (300 miles) long and 320 kilometers (200 miles) wide.
The desert covers about 51,800 square kilometers (20,000 square miles), making it the second-largest desert in Iran after Dasht-e Kavir. During the spring wet season, water briefly flows from the Kerman mountains, but it quickly dries up, leaving behind rocks, sand, and salt.
The eastern part of Dasht-e Lut is a low plateau covered with salt flats, with the lowest areas around 110 meters above sea level (30.398609 N, 58.493041 E). The center of the region has been shaped by wind into long ridges and furrows, some stretching over 150 kilometers (93 miles) and reaching heights of 75 meters (246 feet). This area also has many ravines and sinkholes. The southeast is a large area of sand, similar to the Sahara desert, with dunes as tall as 300 meters (980 feet), among the tallest in the world.
Geology
A study found that over half of the desert's surface is covered by volcanic rocks. Evaporites can be seen when it is very hot.
Archaeology
Around 2500 BC, a thriving civilization called the Jiroft culture lived in this area. The ancient city of Shahdad was located on the western edge of the Lut Desert. On the eastern side, there was a large ancient city, now called Shahr-e Sukhteh or Burnt City, which covered 200 hectares (490 acres). This city was situated along the Helmand River, which is now dry.
The Lut area is an important place for studying ancient history in Iran. Recently, a large-scale archaeological survey was carried out on the eastern side of the Kerman mountain range and near the western edges of the Lut Desert. This survey found 87 ancient sites that date from the fifth millennium BC to the late Islamic period. Of these, 23 sites are from the Chalcolithic period and the Bronze Age.
Climate
The hottest land surface temperature recorded on Earth was in Dasht-e Lut, measured by a special instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite from 2003 to 2010. In 2005, the land surface reached 70.7 °C (159.3 °F), though the air temperature at that time was likely between 30 °C (86 °F) and 54 °C (129 °F). The accuracy of these measurements was between 0.5 K and 1 K. In 2019, scientists reported a land surface temperature of 80.83 °C (177.49 °F) using newer data from the same instrument.
As of 2020, there are no permanent weather stations in Dasht-e Lut, so the exact climate there is not fully known. Based on nearby weather stations, Dasht-e Lut probably gets less than 30 millimetres (1.2 inches) of rain each year. In comparison, the Atacama Desert receives an average of 15 millimetres (0.59 inches) of precipitation yearly, with some areas getting as little as 1 to 3 millimetres (0.04 to 0.12 inches) annually.