Abstract:Soil evaporation is an important component of water consumption of the Taklimakan Desert Highway Shelterbelt.Micro-Lysimeters were used to measure soil evaporation within an irrigation cycle at different distances from the trees drip-irrigated with saline water.Meanwhile,the relationship between soil evaporation and water surface evaporation was analyzed,and soil moisture evaporation was estimated through onedi-mensional adjustment processing.The results show that a spatial-temporal variation pattern of soil evaporation can be clearly identified in the shelterbelt:at the starting stage,the order of soil evaporation was tree base>50cm from tree base>100cm from tree base;and after the 5th day,the order was 50cm from tree base>tree base>100cm from tree base.Soil evaporation in the shelterbelt decreased with soil water contents. The estimation shows that annual total soil evaporation of the shelterbelt will be approximately 2.63×106m3with drip-irrigation using saline water,accounting for 21.43% of total irrigation volume,and soil evaporation in a growing season accounts for 92.28%of annual soil evaporation.As soil evaporation results in such a high amount of water loss,appropriate measures may be required for reducing soil evaporation and improving water use efficiency.