Abstract: Based on field sampling and laboratary analysis, this paper studied the characteristics of soil soluble salts in Minqin Oasis of Northwest China. The dominant anions in the surface soil were Cl^- and SO₄^2-, and the main cations were Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺. The correlation coefficients of the SO₄^2- with the Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ were 0.918, and 0.933, respectively, illustrating that the SO₄^2- was mainly combined with the Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺. There was a higher precision when using linear equation to fit the relationships between the soil electrical conductivity and soil total salt content. Through the measuremnt of surface soil extract spectra and the analysis of surface soil spectral characteristics, it was found that the two transformations of firstorder differentiation of reflectivity and logarithmic reflectivity had the strongest correlations with the soil total salt content. The soil total salt content was further predicted by multiple linear regressions, and the regression equation with the firstorder differentiation of logarithic reflectance as the independent variable had the best effect, with the   determination coefficient  (R²) being 0.789.

Key words: life form, water source, sand-binding plant, root distribution.