Abstract: In August 2010, the field investigation was conducted in the southern and northern transections of the Ebinur Lake region, and different vegetation parameters and 39 soil samples were collected according to the natural conditions of geomorphology, vegetation, and soil in this study. The elevation was obtained with GPS positioning for each sample site. The physicalchemical properties of 78 soil samples, which were collected according to the layers of soil genesis, were analyzed in the lab. The composition of grainsizes of soil samples was measured using Malvern-2 000 for the range of 0.02-1 000 μm and the grainsizes of larger than 1 000 μm were measured by mechanical screening method. Grainsize parameters were calculated by Folk and Ward formula. The Visher cumulative probability sizefrequency curves and environment sensitive grainsize curves also were plotted. Finally, the fractal dimension values of soil samples were analyzed by exponential model. The results show that the soils are mainly composed by medium silt in the study area; the texture is dominated by sandy loam; and the coarseness of the soils in the vertical profiles is significant. The sorting of soils in Ebinur Lake region is poorer. Most of the grain size patterns are positiveskewed. The kurtosis of most soils is a narrow spike state, showing that the sources of soil[JP8]’s[JP] parent material in the study area is diverse. There is a significant environmental heterogeneity of the transportationdeposition for groundsurface materials, and the fluviation is marked. The fractal dimension values of soils in the northern transection are higher than that of southern transection, which indicates that the grainsizes of sediment materials in the northern transection of the Ebinur Lake region is more fine than that in the northern transection and the sorting of soils in the northern transection is poor than that in the southern transection. The result shows that the source of materials and transport dynamics in the northern transection are more complex. The types of cumulative curves for soil grainsizes in both northern and southern transections are varying with different landforms, which reflects the different deposit and transport environments. Most of sensitive grainsize components to environments is about 60 μm in the southern transection, showing that soil parent materials of the study area have some eolian sandy materials, and wind accumulation and erosion are coexist.

Key words: Ebinur Lake region, typical soil transection, grain size characteristics, environment