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.
Liupanshui City is a prefecture-level city in Guizhou Province. Liupanshui City is located in Wumeng Mountain area of western Guizhou, with an annual average temperature of 15 ℃, an average temperature of 19.7 ℃ in summer and an average temperature of 3 ℃ in winter. With a cool, comfortable, moist, fresh climate and moderate ultraviolet radiation, it has been awarded the title of "cool capital of China" by the Chinese Meteorological Association and is the only city in the country named after its climatic characteristics. During the Spring and Autumn period, Liupanshui was a dependency of Yelang; during the warring States period, the city was a dependency of Yelang, which entered the farming era and reflected the characteristics of slave production relations due to the use of metal tools; after Qin unified China, it was a dependency of Hanyang County, Ba County. Liupanshui is located in the junction of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, the watershed in the upper reaches of the Yangtze and Pearl Rivers, and both sides of the Nanpanjiang and Beipanjiang basins, which is rich in mineral resources. Traffic extends in all directions and is important in the southwest.