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Cost: 200 Dollars
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Registration deadline: 2023/12/1
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Capacity: 25 Persons
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Remained Capacity: 23 Persons
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Alborz Mountains and Central Plateau
Badab-e Surt colorful spring in Sari, Cheshmeh Ali spring as a part of Damghan fault (length 100 km) close to Teppe Hesar site (4000 BC) and Haj Aligoli desert (Figure 1) combination of Sand dunes, Nebkha deposits, and salt playa.
Figure 1: Satellite view of Haj Aligholo Playa, Cheshmeh Ali and Badab-e surt springs
Badab-e Surt spring
Badab-e Surt spring (BSs) lying at about 1,841 m asl in Alborz Mountain ranges is located in Northern Iran (Mazandaran province), 100km of Southern Sari city and east of Orost village, it is recognized as a World Heritage Site. A few other places in the world resemble it, including the Pamukkale in Denizli in southwestern Turkey, Mammoth Hot Springs in the USA, and Huanglong in Sichuan Province of China (Sotohian and Ranjbaran 2015). Geologically the spring comes from Shemshak Formation a thick sequence of siliciclastic sediments and coal-bearing deposits.
BSs (Figure 2) is including two springs, one with the saline and the other spring water has a sour taste and orange color. They formed during Pleistocene and Pliocene, by the time the discharged cool bicarbonate-rich waters from these springs has resulted in the formation of red, orange and yellow travertine terraces with crystalline crust, pisoid, tufa, and carbonate black muds lithofacies (Sotohian and Ranjbaran 2015).
Figure 2. Badab-e Surt Spring
Haj Aligoli desert
Haj Aligoli /Chah-e-jam/Damgan desert is located at about 1050-1094 m asl in the southern Alborz Mountains close to dry plains of Iran central plateau and southeast of Damgan city (Semnan province). The desert area is 2391 sq.km; average temperature during summer season (JJ) is 48 ⁰C and -5 ⁰C in winter (JF) (Vahdati Nasab and Hashemi 2016). Damgan desert is a sedimentary-structural phenomenon (Ahmadi 1999). Due to poor vegetation, negative effective precipitation, and wind activity desert landforms Nebkah, Barkhan, Seif, and Sand dunes are dominant in the area (Vali and Musavi 2010). Based on sedimentology Damgan desert can be divided into three parts. The first part, which comprises 47% of the desert, is the flat plate of clayey sediments, the second part is the wet or swampy area, which covers an area of about 34% of the surface of the desert, and finally the remained central part is a salt desert (Figure 3) (Krinsley 1970). Discovered Upper/Epipaleolithic periods settlement evidence in the area indicating that climate during the Late Pleistocene was different from that present (Vahdati Nasab and Hashemi 2016).
Figure 3: Damgan Salt Playa
Cheshmeh Ali spring
The biggest karstic spring in Semnan province called Cheshme-Ali (CAs)(Figure 4) is located at 30 km of NW Damghan and is one of Damghan's desert catchments. CAs water discharge is 500-700 l/s and which provides drinking water for part of Semnan city and 25 nearby villages. The average annual precipitation of the CAs watershed is 155 whereas the number for the evaporation is 1900 mm. Geologically CAs are a part of the eastern Alborz zone which is a combination of the thick Delichae and thin Lar calcareous formations (Hosseini et al. 2018).
Figure 4: Cheshmeh Ali and the constructed palace
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