Abstract: Evaporation-induced salt precipitation in soil-groundwater system is widespread in arid regions. However, there is no consensus on whether the temporal stage division of evaporation for saline water is consistent with that for pure water, which limits a deeper understanding of evaporation-induced salt precipitation in soil-groundwater system. To clarify the stage division and the controlling factors of evaporation-induced salt precipitation under different NaCl concentrations, evaporation experiments were conducted with a Mariotte bottle providing a constant water supply. Quartz sand was used as the porous medium. Five concentrations were tested: 0, 1, 3, 10, and 50 g/L NaCl. Two parallel replicates were performed for each concentration, giving a total of ten soil columns. The experiment lasted 43 days. During the experiment, evaporation mass loss was recorded using an electronic balance; temperatures were monitored using temperature probes and a thermometer; and changes in surface salt features were photographed with an infrared camera. At the end of the experiment, the mass of the surface salt layer was measured. The results show that: (1) evaporation of pure water is consistent with previous studies and can be divided into three stages: Stage I, constant-rate or high-rate evaporation (days 1-18); Stage II, transitional or falling-rate evaporation (days 18-37); and Stage III, diffusion-limited or low-rate evaporation (days 37-43). (2) Evaporation of saline water can also be divided into three stages, but the onset time and intensity of each stage vary with NaCl concentration. With increasing concentration, Stage I becomes shorter and Stage III starts earlier. For 1, 3, 10, and 50 g/L, Stage I lasted 17, 13, 7 and 4 days, respectively, and Stage III started on days 36, 31, 23 and 17, respectively. For moderate to high salinity (≥10 g/L), earlier development of a surface salt crust led to an earlier transition to Stage III and reduced cumulative evaporation. By the end of the experiment, cumulative evaporation for the two replicates at 0, 1, 3, 10, and 50 g/L was 10581.28/12365.20 g, 6248.23/7013.64g, 6007.71/5800.05g, 5871.79/5139.17g, and 1306.78/1624.51g, respectively. (3) The controlling factors vary with both concentration and evaporation stage. In the early period, evaporation for 0, 1, and 3 g/L was mainly controlled by temperature. For 10 g/L, both temperature and water potential were important during the transitional stage, and the influence of solute effects became stronger and contributed to suppression. For 50 g/L, solute effects dominated in the later period.