Turkey is located in the western region of the Eurasian continent. It is a country that spans two continents of Asia and Europe. In fact, Turkey's territory is very small, and its main land area is located in the Asian and Western Asia Peninsula . From the perspective of topographic units, the Antolian Plateau is the main terrain area of Türkiye. Türkiye's land area is about 783,000 square kilometers, which is slightly larger than that of Qinghai Province in our country.
Why is there a lot of saltwater lakes in Türkiye?
Turkey is located in the "Five Seas and Three Continents". The "Five Seas" mentioned here are Caspian Sea , Black Sea , Mediterranean Sea , Red Sea and Arabian Sea . Türkiye is a coastal country, facing the Black Sea in the north, and facing Europe in the northwest, and the Mediterranean Sea in the west and southwest. We found that although Türkiye is a coastal country, there are many lakes distributed on the Anatolian Plateau in , and many of them are saltwater lakes. Why is this?
Turkey location map
We know that according to the nature of lakes, lakes can be divided into two categories: freshwater lakes and saltwater lakes. If a lake has both water inflow and water outflow, then it is difficult to accumulate salt and salinity is difficult to increase. The freshwater properties of lake water are retained. For example, Dongting Lake, Poyang Lake and Taihu in my country are all freshwater lakes. On the contrary, if a lake only has inflow water and no surface runoff or underground runoff flows out of the lake, then salt will accumulate in the lake and the salinity will gradually increase, thus forming a saltwater lake.
Tuz Lake, Turkey
Generally speaking, countries and regions closer to the ocean mostly belong to outflow areas, with high probability of rivers entering the ocean, and most of the lakes are freshwater lakes. We found that although Turkey is a coastal country, there are many saltwater lakes distributed in China. For example, Turkey's largest lake, , Fanhu , is a saltwater lake, and the second largest lake, , Tuzi Lake , is also a saltwater lake. We can analyze from the reasons for the formation of salt water lakes. If a lake wants to form a salt water lake, then runoff can only flow in, and runoff cannot flow out.
Turkey topographic map
In terms of topographic perspective, Turkey is located on the demise border of the Asia-European plate, the African plate and the Indian Ocean plate. The plates collide and squeeze each other, causing the crust to form curved folds, and many tectonic basins are formed on the Anatolian Plateau. The terrain of these structural basins is high, medium and low, so that the surrounding water converges to the bottom of the basin, and it is difficult for water to flow out of the lower lake basin. Although it is very close to the ocean, the lake water cannot flow into the ocean. However, there is a problem here. If water keeps flowing in and the lake water level continues to rise, it will eventually flow out from the edge.
Turkey's position in the plate tectonic diagram
Why does Türkiye's saltwater lake end up flowing out? There are two main reasons here. First, the precipitation in Turkey is mainly brought by the prevalence of , the westerly wind belt, and water vapor from the Atlantic Ocean crosses the Mediterranean and reaches Turkey to form precipitation. For the eastern part of Turkey, there is less water vapor. In addition, the precipitation season of the year is mainly concentrated in winter, so the annual precipitation is between 200 mm and 600 mm, with less annual precipitation and less runoff. Secondly, Türkiye is controlled by the subtropical high pressure zone of in summer. The weather is clear and the evaporation is vigorous, which is conducive to the drop of the lake water level, which causes the lake's salt to gradually accumulate, thus forming a salt water lake.
Turkey and surrounding areas topographic map
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