Dasht-e Lut


The Lut Desert, widely referred to as Dasht-e Lut, is a large salt desert located in the provinces of Kerman and Sistan and Baluchestan, Iran. It is the world's 25th-largest desert, and was included on UNESCO's World Heritage List on July 17, 2016. The surface of its sand has been measured at temperatures as high as 70 °C, making it one of the world's driest and hottest places.

Description

Iran is climatically part of the Afro-Asian belt of deserts, which stretches from the Cape Verde islands off West Africa all the way to Mongolia. The patchy, elongated, light-colored feature in the foreground is the northernmost of the Dasht dry lakes that stretch southward. In near-tropical deserts, elevated areas capture most precipitation. As a result, the desert is largely an abiotic zone.
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 desert basins, long and wide, and is considered to be one of the driest places on Earth.
The area of the desert is about. The other large basin is the 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. In contrast, the center has been sculpted by the wind into a series of parallel ridges and furrows, extending over and reaching in height. This area is also riddled with ravines and sinkholes. The southeast is a vast expanse of sand, like a Saharan erg, with dunes high, among the tallest in the world.

Geology

According to one study, more than half of the desert's surface is covered by volcanic rocks. Evaporites can be observed during hot periods.

Hottest land surface

The Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer installed on NASA's Aqua satellite recorded that from 2003-2010 the hottest land surface on Earth is in Dasht-e Lut, with land surface temperatures reaching, though the air temperature is cooler. The precision of measurements is 0.5 K to 1 K.
The hottest part of Dasht-e Lut is Gandom Beryan, a large plateau covered in dark lava, approximately in area. According to a local legend, the name (Persian — "Toasted wheat" originates from an accident where a load of wheat was left in the desert which was then scorched by the heat in a few days.