Gobi Desert

It has been decades since I last visited the Gobi Desert. Back in then, I was still a secondary student who was amazed by this Asia "endless sea". Time flies, I am now studying the mysterious Gobi Desert as a geologist. By comparing my research data collected recently with my previous knowledge and memories about the desert, I am shocked by its external and internal change. Stretching from South Mongolia to China, Gobi Desert is the world fifth-largest desert. With wonders like the Silk Road, the remote place has transformed into one of the most popular landmarks. Though tourists often expect the desert to be sandy, only 3％ of the total territory are sandy desert. The rest of the desert is rocks, mesas, plateaus, and buttes. However, this is not how the Gobi Desert used to be. Instead of a straw yellow color, the Gobi desert was once a fertile farmland. What had caused the desert to change? I took a flight from Ulaanbaatar to the southern part of the Gobi Desert for 1.5 hours. However, it seems to me that my flight to the desert when I was still was shorter than now. This is strange, technology has improved over the decades and how come it takes a longer time for me to travel to the desert? Soon I found out the answer. The desert expands 3,600 km2 towards the southern edge per year. This trend, named desertification, is getting more serious in Gobi Desert, and it is human, ourselves, who attribute most to the expansion. Explorers have longed to delve into the intact Gobi Desert for centuries. Being scrutinized by professionals all over the world, many important fossil has been found in the desert, including the first scientifically recognized dinosaur egg fossils in 1923. Other than fossil findings, explorers had also spotted a large gold and copper deposit in the South of the Gobi Desert and named it as the Oyu Tolgoi Mine. The mining will inevitably credit to the countries' income. Yet, the project involves deforestation and contamination that may