• Mesa
  • Zhenyuan 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.

Zhenyuan County belongs to Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, 190 kilometers away from Kaili City, the capital of Guizhou Province, located in the Wuling Mountain area in the east of Guizhou Province, is a slope zone of transition from Guizhou Plateau to Xiangxi hills, Xinhuang, Hunan, bordering Sansui and Jianhe to the south, Shiqian, Tongren City to the north, is the east gate of Guizhou Province, known as "the lock key of Yunnan and Chu, the gateway to eastern Guizhou". It belongs to the humid climate zone of the middle subtropics, with an annual average temperature of 16.6 ℃, a frost-free period of 292 days, an annual precipitation of 1057 mm, and annual sunshine hours of 1200 hours. Zhenyuan County has a total area of 1878 square kilometers and has jurisdiction over 12 townships (towns), 110 administrative villages, 5 communities and 4 neighborhood committees, with a total population of 259000, of which 99000 are from 22 ethnic minorities, including Miao, Dong and Tujia, accounting for the total.
Travel Notes In Zhenyuan County