Closed terrain and a certain supply of salt and water. The closed terrain makes the runoff in the basin converge into the lake, so that the lake will not leak out, and the salt will be continuously transported from the basin to the lake through runoff. Under the strong evaporation, the lake becomes more and more salty and the salt accumulates more and more. As time went on, a salt lake was formed.

There are also rubidium, cesium, tungsten, strontium, uranium, calcium chloride, magnesite, zeolite, hectorite and other resources with industrial significance in the salt lake. There are also a large number of special biological resources with important economic value and scientific significance, such as halophilic algae, Artemia, Spirulina, rotifer, etc., as well as drought-tolerant and saline-alkali-tolerant genetic resources, which provide human beings with simple materials, natural edible pigments, energy, various industrial scientific materials and purify the environment, opening up a good prospect of turning salt lakes into "fertile soil". At the same time, salt lake is an important tourism resource and medical sludge resource. The thermal storage characteristics of salt lake brine have been used in "solar salt pond" to generate electricity.