• Mesa
  • Xide County

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.

Xide County belongs to Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, with geographical coordinates of 102 °42'E and 28 °32 °N. It is located in the southwest of Sichuan Province, the north-central part of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, bordering on the north and west, Zhaojue in the east and southeast, Mianning County and Xichang City in the west and southwest, 78 km south of Xichang City, and 483 km north of Chengdu. Xide County is 70.8km long from north to south, 59.5km from east to west and covers an area of 2200.4 square kilometers, equivalent to 3300600 mu. There are Yi, Tibetan, Qiang, Miao, Hui, Mongolian, Tujia, Su, Manchu, Yao, Dong, Naxi, Buyi, Bai, Zhuang and Dai nationalities in Xide County. From January to June 2007, the gross domestic product of Xide County reached 3079.
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