Dasht-i-Lut

Dasht-i-Lut

Dasht-e Lut, also spelled Dasht-i-Lut and known as the Lut Desert, is a large salt desert in southeastern Iran and is the world's 25th largest desert. It has been ranked the hottest place on earth at nearly 70.7 degrees C (159-160 degrees F), and is one of the world's driest places.

Iran is climatically part of the Afro-Asian belt of deserts that stretch from the Cape Verde islands off West Africa all the way to Mongolia near Beijing, China. The patchy, elongated, light-colored feature in the foreground (parallel to the mountain range) is the northernmost of the Dasht dry lakes that stretch southward 300 kilometers (190 mi). In near-tropical deserts, elevated areas capture most precipitation. As a result 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, 480 kilometers (300 mi) long and 320 kilometers (200 mi) wide, and is considered to be one of the driest places on Earth.
Area of the desert is about 51,800 square kilometers (20,000 mi²).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 150 km (93 mi) and reaching 75 m (250 ft) 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 300 m (1000 ft) high, among the tallest in the world.