The Loess Plateau is located in China's northwest, due north, north China, the Tibetan Plateau, the combination of the Qinling Mountains, involving Gansu (east), Qinghai, Ningxia, Shaanxi (north), Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Hebei and other provinces and regions. The Loess Plateau lies approximately between the east of the Lanzhou section of the Yellow River, south of the Mao Wusu Sandy, north of the Guanzhong Basin, and west of the Taihang Mountains, with an area of about 640,000 square kilometers, which is slightly smaller than the area of 670,000 square kilometers in France (including French Guiana in South America).
The source of the name of the Loess Plateau, it is estimated that even the children know, because the loess is too much. There is no other region in the world that has such a large area of loess as the Loess Plateau. Where is all this loess scraped from? Much of the loess was formed during the Quaternary period, more than two million years ago, and is known academically as wind and dust deposits. These loesses are also categorized into two types, primary loesses and secondary loesses. The so-called primary loess is equivalent to the old residents, and the so-called secondary loess is equivalent to the newly moved residents.
There is also a theory that the Loess Plateau was an oversized lake about 8 million years ago. At that time, the Earth was windy, blowing a lot of loess and dust into this lake. Over time, the loess filled up the lake and the elevation got higher and higher, eventually forming the current Loess Plateau.
The Loess Plateau is not a flat plateau, with "thousands of ravines" to describe the topography of the Loess Plateau is appropriate. You must have seen many literary works reflecting the history of the northern Shaanxi region, and one of the most classic images is that of an old man with a white towel tied around his head, riding a donkey and singing the song "Let's Go" as he traveled through the gullies and ravines.
The Loess Plateau is not very hard because of the quality of the soil, and the hardness of the Tibetan Plateau and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau is not the same. Due to millions of years of rain and the impact of the Yellow River, the soil of the Loess Plateau has been eroded for various reasons, forming loess, beams, mounts and ditches. When people sometimes listen to folk songs from the northern Shaanxi region, they will often hear these terms. For example, the lyrics of the song "That's a who," reads: "On the oh-beam of the dam, that's a who, that's the second sister of my life. ...... I'm standing on this oh-beam that sister ah you in which ditch."
What is loess? Simply put, it is a mountain whose summit is not pointed, but a plain area on which you can plow. Some loess are so close together that two people standing on their respective loess can clearly hear each other conversing. But if you want to shake hands, I'm sorry, it can tire you out and take most of the day's work, to say the least. What is a mount? If the loess is the Australian continent, then the mount is the Greenland subcontinent, much smaller than the loess, but the structure is similar to the loess. Loess mount is mainly concentrated in the northern part of the central Loess Plateau, that is, from the east of Shanxi Luliang Mountain, from the west of Ningxia Liupan Mountain, from the south of Shaanxi, Gansu, between the Meridian Ridge, especially Yan'an area.
How high is the Loess Plateau? Generally speaking, it is high in the west and low in the east. The highest part of the Loess Plateau is in the west, and the highest elevation of the western part of the famous Liupan Mountains is about 3,000 meters, that is, the area around Lanzhou in Gansu, Dingxi in Gansu, and Haiyuan in Ningxia. The elevation of the Loess Plateau gets lower the further east you go, for example, between the Liupan Mountains in the west and the Luliang Mountains on the east bank of the Yellow River in the east, the highest elevation in this area is about 2,000 meters. In the area east of the Luliang Mountains, the Loess Plateau is not so high, usually about 1,000 meters. There are many river valleys in the eastern part of the Loess Plateau, such as the famous Fen River Valley, which starts from Taiyuan in the north and extends to the narrow region of Hejin in the south, which invariably pulls down the Loess Plateau's "overall height".
Many people's first impression of the Loess Plateau is that it is "dirt". This may have been the case in the past, but in the past few decades, through the efforts of the people, the vegetation cover has been increasing, and now the Loess Plateau is not so "earthy" anymore.
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