A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill, which is bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and stands distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas characteristically consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks capped by a more resistant layer or layers of harder rock, e.g. shales overlain by sandstones. The resistant layer acts as a caprock that forms the flat summit of a mesa. The caprock can consist of either sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and limestone; dissected lava flows; or a deeply eroded duricrust. Unlike plateau, whose usage does not imply horizontal layers of bedrock, e.g. Tibetan Plateau, the term mesa applies exclusively to the landforms built of flat-lying strata. Instead, flat-topped plateaus are specifically known as tablelands.
Dingzhou City, Hebei Province under the jurisdiction of county-level cities, by Baoding City escrow, Hebei Province directly administered by the county (city) system reform pilot county. Located at the eastern foot of Taihang Mountain, the western edge of North China Plain and the west of central Hebei Province, it has been known as "Kyushu throat, Shenjing brief area" since ancient times. With a total area of 1283.7 square kilometers and a resident population of 1.2269 million (2018), it has jurisdiction over 4 streets, 16 towns and 5 townships. Dingzhou City, located in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Economic Zone, is an important node city in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Economic Zone, a national comprehensive pilot area of new urbanization, a modern medium-sized city cultivated in the 12th five-year Plan of Hebei Province, and one of the ten famous historical and cultural cities in Hebei Province. In 2018, the gross domestic product of Dingzhou City reached 33.284 billion yuan, an increase of 7.3% over the same period last year.