01 Apr Salt Lake
Salt Lake -The Tuz Golu, also called Tatta in antiquity, is a closed-end lake surrounded by plateaus. The sources that feed the lake are insufficient, the river Melendiz (Aksaray) and river Pecenekozu (Sereflikochisar). In summer, because of evaporation, the lake dries into a layer of salt of about 30 centimeters, covering the mud. In winter the water get together again, but in its deepest part does not exceed 2 meters. Although it is the second largest lake in Turkey, it doesn’t contains a large amount of water, due to its shallowness.
With the 33%, is one of the world’s lakes with higher salinity, so is impossible to farm in the surroundings. Thus, the Tuz Golu salt is one of the richest in the world. It gives 300 thousand tons of salt per year, 60% of the total production in Turkey. This salt can only be collected in the months of July and August when the lake dries. To ensure that it would be clean, the salt is collected only from the areas in which layer are more than 6 centimeters thick. Once excavated it, the rag layer is removed and they separate clean mounds, loaded manually to the mini-trains wagons conveyors.
Location: 120 km (75 miles) south of Ankara, on the way to Cappadocia.
Size: Second largest lake in Turkey, with 1,500 kilometers (580 miles) square. In summer, the surface can be reduced to a thousand kilometers (386 miles) square.
Width: 48 kilometers (30 miles).
Length: 80 km (50 miles).
Depth: 1.2 meters (3.6 feet). More than two million years it is estimated that the water level was about 100 meters higher. In times of severe drought, the surface is covered by salt blocks up to 20 inches thick.
Elevation: 905 meters (2970 feet).
Training: Tectonics.
Water: Salt water.