Abstract: The Tarim Desert Highway was started its building in 1992 and has been open to traffic since 1996.In order to ensure an unblocked traffic of the highway, a sand drift control system combined by sand obstruction with sand-fixing is built along the highway. It is paid a great attention to that whether the system is effective or not within the designed period. This paper discusses the sand-obstructiong effect of the high sandbreaks in the different morphologic sections along the Tarim Desert Highway. The results show that the system can not only effectively obstruct sand drift within the system, but also can reduce the speed of sand movement out of the system along the road sections between the sandridges within 2～3 year. The high sandbreaks along the road sections in the areas of sandridges and the sandridge passes as well as in the transitional zones can effectively obstruct sand drift during a short period only, and can not reduce the moving speed of the dunes from the outside to the inside of the system. The high sandbreaks along the road sections in the areas of barchans (or chains) can obviously reduce the moving speed of the dunes from the outside to the inside of the system, the dunes, however, can surmount the sandbreaks to enter the system at last. The high sandbreaks near the linear dunes between the sandridges can be submerges within 2～3 years.

Key words: Tarim Desert Highway, high sandbreak, morphologic section, sand-obstructiong effect