Salt Desert, Dasht-e Kavir, Iran

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The image shows the curved sands in Iran's Dasht-e Kavir salt desert. Known as the "Great Sea of Salt", it has clayey and sandy soils with a high content of salt on the surface due to the concentration of minerals resulting from the high evaporation of the summer.

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It is about 800 kilometers long by 320 kilometers wide with a total area of about 77,600 km2 (larger than the state of Paraíba), making it the 24th largest desert in the world. The area of this desert stretches from the Alborz mountain range in the northwest to the Dasht-e Lut in the southeast and is divided between the Iranian provinces of Khorasan, Semnan, Tehran, Isfahan and Yazd.

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Image taken in

January 20, 2012

Ikonos-2