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Xiangkhoang Plateau
The Xiang Khouang Plateau or Xiang Khwang Plateau, also known in French as Plateau dTran-Ninh'' is a plateau in the north of Laos. The landscape is characterized by green mountains, rugged karst formations and verdant valleys with plenty of rivers, caves and waterfalls. Geography The Luang Prabang Range, and the Annamite Range separate the plateau from Thailand and Vietnam respectively. The ranges of the plateau are sandstone and limestone mountains between 2000 and 2800 meters high (about 6561 and 9842 feet high). These have been heavily deforested. The highest mountain of Laos, Phou Bia, is located to the south of the Xiangkhoang. Altitudes within the plateau area may reach 1000 m. Several tributaries of the Mekong drain in the plateau, such as the Nam Ngum, Ngiap and the Khan River. The major town in the area is the capital of Phonsavan. The plateau gives its name to present-day Xiangkhouang Province in which Phonsavan is located. History The plateau is the location of the P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonsavan
Phonsavan ( Lao: ໂພນສະຫວັນ), population 37,507, is the capital of Xiangkhouang Province. Phonsavan was built in the late-1970s and replaced the old Xiangkhouang (today: Muang Khoune) which was destroyed during the Second Indochina War. Phonsavan is known for the nearby Plain of Jars, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The main economic activities in Phonsavan are based on governmental administration, mining by Chinese and Australian companies, tourism, and the work of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) clearing unexploded ordnance (UXO). History While the origin of the Plain of Jars people is unknown, the recorded history of Xiangkhouang is interlinked with the Tai Phuan. The Tai Phuan or Phuan people are a Buddhist Tai-Lao ethnic group that migrated to Laos from southern China and by the 13th century had formed the independent principality Muang Phuan at the Plain of Jars with Xiangkhouang (the contemporary Muang Khoun) as the capital. They prospered from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deforested
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated deforestation occurs in tropical rainforests. About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, a half of that loss occurring in the last century. Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines deforestation as the conversion of forest to other land uses (regardless of whether it is human-induced). "Deforestation" and "forest area net change" are not the same: the latter is the sum of all forest losses (deforestation) and all forest gains (forest expansion) in a gi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cluster Munitions
A cluster munition is a form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon that releases or ejects smaller submunitions. Commonly, this is a cluster bomb that ejects explosive bomblets that are designed to kill personnel and destroy vehicles. Other cluster munitions are designed to destroy runways or electric power transmission lines, disperse chemical or biological weapons, or to scatter land mines. Some submunition-based weapons can disperse non-munitions, such as leaflets. Because cluster bombs release many small bomblets over a wide area, they pose risks to civilians both during attacks and afterwards. Unexploded bomblets can kill or maim civilians and/or unintended targets long after a conflict has ended, and are costly to locate and remove. Cluster munitions are prohibited for those nations that ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions, adopted in Dublin, Ireland, in May 2008. The Convention entered into force and became binding international law upon ratifyin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plain Of Jars
The Plain of Jars ( Lao: ທົ່ງໄຫຫິນ ''Thong Hai Hin'', ) is a megalithic archaeological landscape in Laos. It consists of thousands of stone jars scattered around the upland valleys and the lower foothills of the central plain of the Xiangkhoang Plateau. The jars are arranged in clusters ranging in number from one to several hundred. The Xiangkhoang Plateau is at the northern end of the Annamese Cordillera, the principal mountain range of Indochina. French researcher Madeleine Colani concluded in 1930 that the jars were associated with burial practices. Excavation by Lao and Japanese archaeologists in the intervening years has supported this interpretation with the discovery of human remains, burial goods and ceramics around the jars. Researchers (using optically stimulated luminescence) determined that the jars were put in place as early as 1240 to 660 BC. The jars at Site 1 (using detrital zircon geochronology) were determined to have been transported to their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xiangkhouang Province
Xiangkhouang ( Lao: ຊຽງຂວາງ, meaning 'Horizontal City') is a province of Laos on the Xiangkhoang Plateau, in the nation's northeast. The province has the distinction of being the most heavily bombed place on Earth. The province was originally known as the Principality of ''Muang Phuan'' (Muang Phouan / Xieng Khouang). Its present capital is Phonsavan. The population of the province as of the 2015 census was 244,684. Xiangkhouang province covers an area of and is mountainous. Apart from floodplains, the largest area of level land in the country is on the province's Xiangkhoang Plateau. The plateau is characterized by rolling hills and grassland whose elevation averages . The country's highest peak, Phou Bia (), rises at the south side of the plateau. Nam Et-Phou Louey is a National Biodiversity Conservation Area (NBCA) in the province, covering an area of 5,959 km2, and overlaps into Houaphanh and Luang Prabang provinces. The province's Plain of Jars was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Khan River
The river Khan is an ephemeral river crossing the Erongo region of central Namibia. It is the main tributary of the Swakop River and only occasionally carries surface water during the rain seasons in November and February/March. Khan's catchment area including its tributaries Slang and Etiro is . The Khan has its origin near the settlement of Otjisemba, north-west of Okahandja. From there the river course passes westwards to the town of Usakos, and further in a south-western direction through the Namib desert. It has its confluence with the Swakop River 40 km east of Swakopmund. It is a popular tourist attraction due to the proliferation of mammals such as the klipspringer The klipspringer (; ''Oreotragus oreotragus'') is a small antelope found in eastern and southern Africa. The sole member of its genus and subfamily/tribe, the klipspringer was first described by German zoologist Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zim ... antelope, ostriches and jackals. References ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nam Ngum
Nam Ngum ( Laotian: ນໍ້າງືມ ) is a 354 km long river in Laos. It is a major tributary of the Mekong River. Geography The Nam Ngum originates from the northern mountainous region of Xiangkhoang Province and flows south through Vientiane Province joining the Mekong at the capital of Laos, Vientiane. The Nam Ngum river basin is home to about one million people in Laos. The current largest dam on Nam Ngum, Nam Ngum Dam (Nam Ngum 1 Hydropower Project) was originally constructed between 1968 and 1971. There are also four other hydropower projects under construction or planned for construction on the Nam Ngum River. Tourism destinations along Nam Ngum include the Nam Ngum Lake, Dansavanh Nam Ngum Resort, and Vang Vieng. The Nam Ngum river basin covers 16,906 square kilometers, including 8,297 km2 of watershed area. The Nam Ngum river basin covers 2.73 percent of the lower Mekong river basin. The water flow of the Nam Ngum River to the Mekong River is 700 m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mekong
The Mekong or Mekong River is a trans-boundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's List of rivers by length, twelfth longest river and List of longest rivers of Asia, the third longest in Asia. Its estimated length is , and it drains an area of , discharging of water annually. From the Tibetan Plateau the river runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The extreme seasonal variations in flow and the presence of rapids and waterfalls in the Mekong make navigation difficult. Even so, the river is a major trade route between western China and Southeast Asia. Names The Mekong was originally called ''Mae Nam Khong'' from a contracted form of Tai language, Tai shortened to ''Mae Khong''. In Thai and Lao, ''Mae Nam'' ("Mother of Water[s]") is used for large rivers and ''Khong'' is the proper name referred to as "River Khong". However, ''Khong'' is an archaic word meaning "river", loaned from Austroasiatic languages, such as Vietnamese ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phou Bia
Phou Bia ( Lao: ພູເບັ້ຍ) is the highest mountain in Laos. It is in the Annamese Cordillera, at the southern limit of the Xiangkhoang Plateau in Xiangkhouang Province. Owing to its elevation—2,819 m (9,249 ft), the highest terrestrial point in Laos, the climate is cold and the area around the mountain is mostly cloudy. History Although no snow has been reported for decades, it is claimed that as late as the first years of the 20th century, snow fell occasionally on its summit. On 10 April 1970, an Air America C-130A aircraft crashed into the mountain. The area is remote, covered with jungle, and has been used by Hmong guerilla soldiers. In the 1970s, c. 60,000 Hmong supporting FAC operations took refuge at the Phou Bia massif. There have been reports of smaller Hmong hideouts in the area as recently as 2006. Phou Bia rises in a restricted military area near the abandoned Long Chen air base, and for this reason sees few outside visitors. Unexploded ordnance fu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Limestone
Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms when these minerals precipitate out of water containing dissolved calcium. This can take place through both biological and nonbiological processes, though biological processes, such as the accumulation of corals and shells in the sea, have likely been more important for the last 540 million years. Limestone often contains fossils which provide scientists with information on ancient environments and on the evolution of life. About 20% to 25% of sedimentary rock is carbonate rock, and most of this is limestone. The remaining carbonate rock is mostly dolomite, a closely related rock, which contains a high percentage of the mineral dolomite, . ''Magnesian limestone'' is an obsolete and poorly-defined term used variously for dolomite, for limes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laos
Laos (, ''Lāo'' )), officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic ( Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ, French: République démocratique populaire lao), is a socialist state and the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. At the heart of the Indochinese Peninsula, Laos is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and southwest. Its capital and largest city is Vientiane. Present-day Laos traces its historic and cultural identity to Lan Xang, which existed from the 14th century to the 18th century as one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia. Because of its central geographical location in Southeast Asia, the kingdom became a hub for overland trade and became wealthy economically and culturally. After a period of internal conflict, Lan Xang broke into three separate kingdoms: Luang Phrabang, Vientiane and Champasak. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
