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Ordos Desert
The Ordos Desert () is a desert/ steppe region in Northwest China, administered under the prefecture of Ordos City in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (centered ca. ). It extends over an area of approximately , and comprises two sub-deserts: China's 7th-largest desert, the Kubuqi Desert, in the north; and China's 8th-largest desert, the Mu Us Desert, in the south. Wedged between the arable Hetao region to the north and the Loess Plateau to the south, the soil of the Ordos Desert is mostly a mixture of dry clay and sand, and as a result is poorly suited for agriculture. Location The Ordos Desert is almost completely encircled in the west, north and east by a great rectangular bend of the middle Yellow River known as the Ordos Loop. Mountain ranges separate the Ordos from the Gobi Desert north and east of the Yellow River. The northern border serves as the southern border of the Mu Us Desert. The mountain chains separating the Ordos from the central Gobi in the nort ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palearctic Realm
The Palearctic or Palaearctic is a biogeographic realm of the Earth, the largest of eight. Confined almost entirely to the Eastern Hemisphere, it stretches across Europe and Asia, north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Mediterranean Basin; North Africa; North Arabia; Western, Central and East Asia. The Palaearctic realm also has numerous rivers and lakes, forming several freshwater ecoregions. Both the eastern and westernmost extremes of the Paleartic span into the Western Hemisphere, including Cape Dezhnyov in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug to the east and Iceland to the west. The term was first used in the 19th century, and is still in use as the basis for zoogeographic classification. History In an 1858 paper for the ''Proceedings of the Linnean Society'', British zoologist Philip Sclater first identified six terrestrial zoogeographic realms of the world: Palaearctic, Aethiopian/ Afrotropic, Indian/ Indom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steppe
In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without closed forests except near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome * the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome A steppe is usually covered with grass and shrubs, depending on the season and latitude. The term ''steppe climate'' denotes a semi-arid climate, which is encountered in regions too dry to support a forest, but not dry enough to be a desert. Steppes are usually characterized by a semi-arid or continental climate. Temperature extremes can be recorded in the summer of up to and in winter of down to . Besides this major seasonal difference, fluctuations between day and night are also significant: in both the highlands of Mongolia and northern Nevada, can be reached during the day with sub-freezing readings at night. Steppes ave ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yellow River
The Yellow River, also known as Huanghe, is the second-longest river in China and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system on Earth, with an estimated length of and a Drainage basin, watershed of . Beginning in the Bayan Har Mountains, the river flows generally eastwards before entering the long Ordos Loop, which runs northeast at Gansu through the Ordos Plateau and turns east in Inner Mongolia. The river then turns sharply southwards to form the border between Shanxi and Shaanxi, turns eastwards at its confluence with the Wei River, and flows across the North China Plain before emptying into the Bohai Sea. The river is named for the yellow color of its water, which comes from the large amount of sediment discharged into the water as the river flows through the Loess Plateau. The Yellow River basin was the birthplace of Yellow River civilization, ancient Chinese civilization. According to traditional Chinese historiography, the Xia dynasty originated on it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agriculture
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in the cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output. , small farms produce about one-third of the world's food, but large farms are prevalent. The largest 1% of farms in the world are greater than and operate more than 70% of the world's farmland. Nearly 40% of agricultural land is found on farms larger than . However, five of every six farm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sand
Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is usually defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class of soil or soil type; i.e., a soil containing more than 85 percent sand-sized particles by mass. The composition of sand varies, depending on the local rock sources and conditions, but the most common constituent of sand in inland continental settings and non-tropical coastal settings is silica (silicon dioxide, or SiO2), usually in the form of quartz. Calcium carbonate is the second most common type of sand. One such example of this is aragonite, which has been created over the past 500million years by various forms of life, such as coral and shellfish. It is the primary form of sand apparent in areas where reefs have dominated the ecosystem for millions of years, as in the Caribbean. Somewhat more rarely, sand may be composed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clay
Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impurities, such as a reddish or brownish colour from small amounts of iron oxide. Clays develop plasticity (physics), plasticity when wet but can be hardened through Pottery#Firing, firing. Clay is the longest-known ceramic material. Prehistoric humans discovered the useful properties of clay and used it for making pottery. Some of the earliest pottery shards have been radiocarbon dating, dated to around 14,000 BCE, and Clay tablet, clay tablets were the first known writing medium. Clay is used in many modern industrial processes, such as paper making, cement production, and chemical filtration, filtering. Between one-half and two-thirds of the world's population live or work in buildings made with clay, often baked into brick, as an essenti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soil
Soil, also commonly referred to as earth, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, water, and organisms that together support the life of plants and soil organisms. Some scientific definitions distinguish dirt from ''soil'' by restricting the former term specifically to displaced soil. Soil consists of a solid collection of minerals and organic matter (the soil matrix), as well as a porous phase that holds gases (the soil atmosphere) and water (the soil solution). Accordingly, soil is a three- state system of solids, liquids, and gases. Soil is a product of several factors: the influence of climate, relief (elevation, orientation, and slope of terrain), organisms, and the soil's parent materials (original minerals) interacting over time. It continually undergoes development by way of numerous physical, chemical and biological processes, which include weathering with associated erosion. Given its complexity and strong internal connectedness, soil ecologists ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loess Plateau
The Loess Plateau is a plateau in north-central China formed of loess, a clastic rock, clastic silt-like sediment formed by the accumulation of Dust#Atmospheric, wind-blown dust. It is located southeast of the Gobi Desert and is surrounded by the Yellow River. It includes parts of the Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Shaanxi and Shanxi. The depositional setting of the Chinese Loess Plateau was shaped by the tectonic movement in the Neogene period, after which strong southeast winds caused by the East Asian Monsoon transported sediment to the plateau during the Quaternary period. The three main morphological types in the Loess Plateau are loess platforms, ridges and hills, formed by the deposition and erosion of loess. Most of the loess comes from the Gobi Desert and other nearby deserts. The sediments were transported to the Loess Plateau during interglacial periods by southeasterly prevailing winds and winter monsoon winds. After the deposition of sediments on the plateau, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hetao
Hetao () is a C-shaped region in northwestern China consisting of a collection of flood plains stretching from the banks of the northern half of the Ordos Loop, a large northerly rectangular bend of the Yellow River, that forms the river's entire middle section. The region makes up the northern margin of the Ordos Basin, bounded in the west by the Helan Mountains, the north by the Yin Mountains, the east by the northern portion of Lüliang Mountains, and the south by the Ordos Desert and the Loess Plateau (separated by the course of the Ming Great Wall). The Hetao region is divided into two main sections — the "West Loop" () in Ningxia, and the "East Loop" () in Inner Mongolia. The west section includes the alluvial Yinchuan Plain (, a.k.a. Ningxia Plain) around Shizuishan, Yinchuan, and Wuzhong, and the Weining Plain () around Zhongwei. The east section is further divided into two parts — the western "Back Loop" (), which includes the Bayannur Plain () around B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mu Us Desert
The Mu Us Desert ( Mongolian: ''magu usu'' Ordos: ʊː ʊsʊ̆"bad (lacking) water"), also known as the Maowusu Desert (), is a desert in the northern Ordos Plateau in Inner Mongolia, Northwest China.Donovan Webster. 2002. China's Unknown Gobi Alashan. National Geographic 201(1):48-75 Its southeastern end is crossed by the Ming Great Wall, and it forms the southern portion of the Ordos Desert.Yan, Changzhen; Wang, Tao; Han, Zhiwen. 2005. Using MODIS data to access land desertification in Ordos Plateau -- Mu Us Desert case study. Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2005. IGARSS '05. Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International (Volume:4). DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS.2005.1525454 The Wuding River drains the area, and then flows into the Ordos Loop of the Yellow River.Reader's Digest Assoc., Inc. 2004. Reader's Digest Illustrated World Atlas. Pleasantville, N. Y., USALovell, Julia. 2006. The Great Wall, China Against the World, 1000 BCE-AD 2000. Grove Press. New York, USA. Delineation Con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kubuqi Desert
The Kubuqi Desert () is a desert within the Ordos Basin in northwestern China, under the administration of the Inner Mongolian prefecture of Ordos City. Located between the Hetao plains and the Loess Plateau, it is part of the Ordos Desert along with the neighboring Mu Us Desert to its south, and is the seventh-largest desert in China with an area of . Ecology The area had gone through desertification due to centuries of overgrazing. Starting in 1988, the Elion Resources Group and the Government of Beijing worked to reverse desertification and restore the environment. By 2017, one third of the desert has had greenery restored. Solar panels being installed to produce electricity are also reducing wind speeds, and the shaded areas preserve moisture. Economic value Gigawatt-scale powerplants are being built in the desert, using solar panels and wind turbines A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. , hundreds of thousands ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region
Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of China. Its border includes two-thirds of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a small section of China's border with Russia (Zabaykalsky Krai). Its capital is Hohhot; other major cities include Baotou, Chifeng, Tongliao, and Ordos. The autonomous region was established in 1947, incorporating the areas of the former Republic of China provinces of Suiyuan, Chahar, Rehe, Liaobei, and Xing'an, along with the northern parts of Gansu and Ningxia. Its area makes it the third largest Chinese administrative subdivision, constituting approximately and 12% of China's total land area. Due to its long span from east to west, Inner Mongolia is geographically divided into eastern and western divisions. The eastern division is often included in Northeastern China (Dongbei), with major cities including Tongliao, Chifeng, Hailar, and Ulanhot. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
