Abstract: The distribution of composite longitudinal ridges alternating with interdune corridors is the largescale morphological pattern in the Taklimakan Desert, where almost all the types of dunes are distributed. Interdune corridors are the optimal experiment sites to study the development process of sand dunes. Based on the Google Earth images, this paper is to investigate the fractal characteristics of dunes along the local prevailing wind direction in the Taklimakan Desert. Some conclusions are as follows: ① There was a significant double logarithmic relationship between size and frequency of dune shape index (floorageperimeter relationship), which proved that the sand dunes in the interdune corridor alternating with the composite longitudinal ridges had the fractal characteristics independent of scales used in statistics; ② Sand dunes in the interdune corridors alternating with the composite longitudinal ridges had different fractal dimensions, the fractal dimension of pieshaped dunes was the highest (1.337), it was moderate (1.170) for the barchans and the lowest (1.087) for the simple linear dunes; ③ The spatial difference of the fractal dimension of sand dunes alternating with the composite longitudinal ridges was high and varied in a range of 1.187-1.656, and the fractal dimension was in an order of leeward slope (1.24) < central ridge (1.40) < windward slope (1.50), and the coefficient of variation was 0.106; ④ The spatial distribution of dune stability index was opposite to the dune fractal dimension in the interdune corridor, that is in an order of leeward slope (0.26) > central ridge (0.16) > windward slope (0.10); ⑤ The spatial difference of dune fractal dimension was related to the development level of sand dunes. Fractal dimension of dunes could be used as an integrated quantitative index to evaluate aeolian environment in mobile desert.  

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