• Mesa
  • Shapotou District

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.

Shapotou District (Zhongwei City), which belongs to Zhongwei City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous region, is located in the central and western part of Ningxia, between 104 °17-#39;-106 °10-#39; east longitude and 36 °06-#39;-37 °50-#39; north latitude. It is bordered by Zhongning County in the east, Tongxin County, Haiyuan County and Jingyuan County in Gansu Province in the south, Jingtai County in Gansu Province in the west, and Alashan left Banner in Inner Mongolia Autonomous region in the north. The territory is 115.3 kilometers long from east to west and 81.4 kilometers wide from north to south, with a total area of 5922.4 square kilometers. The total population is 403200 (2015). In 2011, the total industrial output value of Shapotou District reached 6.65 billion yuan, an increase of 16.4% over 2010.
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