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Qaidam
The Qaidam, Tsaidam, or Chaidamu Basin is a hyperarid basin that occupies a large part of Haixi Prefecture in Qinghai Province, China. The basin covers an area of approximately , one-fourth of which is covered by saline lakes and playas. Around one third of the basin, about , is desert. Name ''Tshwa'i 'Dam'' is the Wylie romanization of the Tibetan name , meaning "Salt Marsh"; the Tibetan Pinyin romanization of the same name is ''Caidam''. ''Qaidam'' is the GNC romanization of its transcription into Mongolian; ''Tsaidam'' is a variant romanization of the same name. ''Chaidamu'' is the pinyin romanization of its transcription into Chinese characters; the same name was formerly romanized as the for the Chinese Postal Map. Geography Orographically, the Qaidam Basin is a comparatively low area in the northeastern part of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau.. With an elevation of around , Qaidam forms a kind of shelf between Tibet to the south (around ) and Gansu to the north (a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sanhu Depression
The Qarhan Playa or also misleadingly described as , is a playa in the Golmud and Dulan counties of Haixi Prefecture, Qinghai, China. Formerly a single unitary lake, it is now an expansive salt flat divided into four greater sections ( Dabusun, Big/ Small Bieletan, Suli, and N./ S. Huoluxun) which contain a number of smaller salt lakes, the largest of which is Dabusun Lake. The area is heavily exploited for its valuable salt, mineral, and rare earth reserves but parts are also protected as a national park and contribute to regional tourism. Name ''Qarhan'' is the GNC romanization of the area's Mongolian name, originally derived from the word for "white" (Modern mn, , ''tsagaan'', or , ''čaɣan'').. ''Cha'erhan'' is the pinyin romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of , a modification of the original transcription into Chinese characters of the same name; it is also sometimes clipped into ''Charhan'' in English sources. The Chinese name, which does not distinguish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haixi Prefecture
Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (; mn, ᠬᠠᠶᠢᠰᠢ ᠶᠢᠨ ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠲᠥᠪᠡᠳ ᠦᠨᠳᠦᠰᠦᠲᠡᠨ ᠦ ᠥᠪᠡᠷᠲᠡᠭᠡᠨ ᠵᠠᠰᠠᠬᠤ ᠵᠧᠦ; bo, མཚོ་ནུབ་སོག་རིགས་ཆ་བོད་རིགས་རང་སྐྱོང་ཁུལ་), locally also known as Qaidam Prefecture (mong. Qaidam; tib. Caindam; chin. Chaidamu), is an autonomous prefecture occupying much of the northern tier of as well as part of the southwest of Qinghai Province, China. It has an area of and its seat is Delingha. The name of the prefecture literally means "west of (Qinghai) Lake." Geladandong Mountain, the source of the Yangtze River, is located here. History After 1949, the People's Government of Dulan County was founded and the area was renamed Dulan Autonomous District (); in 1954, Dulan was renamed Haixi Mongol, Tibetan and Kazakh Autonomous District () and in 1955, Haixi Mongol, Tibe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qinghai Province
Qinghai (; alternately romanized as Tsinghai, Ch'inghai), also known as Kokonor, is a landlocked province in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It is the fourth largest province of China by area and has the third smallest population. Its capital and largest city is Xining. Qinghai borders Gansu on the northeast, Xinjiang on the northwest, Sichuan on the southeast and the Tibet Autonomous Region on the southwest. Qinghai province was established in 1928 during the period of the Republic of China, and until 1949 was ruled by Chinese Muslim warlords known as the Ma clique. The Chinese name "Qinghai" is after Qinghai Lake, the largest lake in China. The lake is known as Tso ngon in Tibetan, and as Kokonor Lake in English, derived from the Mongol Oirat name for Qinghai Lake. Both Tso ngon and Kokonor are names found in historic documents to describe the region.Gangchen Khishong, 2001. ''Tibet and Manchu: An Assessment of Tibet-Manchu Relations in Five Phases of De ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tibetan Plateau
The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Tibet Autonomous Region, most of Qinghai, western half of Sichuan, Southern Gansu provinces in Western China, southern Xinjiang, Bhutan, the Indian regions of Ladakh and Lahaul and Spiti (Himachal Pradesh) as well as Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan, northwestern Nepal, eastern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan. It stretches approximately north to south and east to west. It is the world's highest and largest plateau above sea level, with an area of (about five times the size of Metropolitan France). With an average elevation exceeding and being surrounded by imposing mountain ranges that harbor the world's two highest summits, Mount Everest and K2, the Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as "the Roof of the World". The Tibetan Plateau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sink (geography)
An endorheic basin (; also spelled endoreic basin or endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, but drainage converges instead into lakes or swamps, permanent or seasonal, that equilibrate through evaporation. They are also called closed or terminal basins, internal drainage systems, or simply basins. Endorheic regions contrast with exorheic regions. Endorheic water bodies include some of the largest lakes in the world, such as the Caspian Sea, the world's largest inland body of water. Basins with subsurface outflows which eventually lead to the ocean are generally not considered endorheic; they are cryptorheic. Endorheic basins constitute local base levels, defining a limit of erosion and deposition processes of nearby areas. Etymology The term was borrowed from French ''endor(rh)éisme'', coined from the combining form ''endo-'' (from grc, ἔνδον ''éndon'' 'with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hyperarid
An aridity index (AI) is a numerical indicator of the degree of dryness of the climate at a given location. A number of aridity indices have been proposed (see below); these indicators serve to identify, locate or delimit regions that suffer from a deficit of available water, a condition that can severely affect the effective use of the land for such activities as agriculture or stock-farming. Historical background and indices Köppen At the turn of the 20th century, Wladimir Köppen and Rudolf Geiger developed the concept of a climate classification where arid regions were defined as those places where the annual rainfall accumulation (in centimetres) is less than R/2, where: * R=2\times T if rainfall occurs mainly in the cold season, * R=2\times T+14 if rainfall is evenly distributed throughout the year, and * R=2\times T+28 if rainfall occurs mainly in the hot season. where T is the mean annual temperature in Celsius. This was one of the first attempts at defining an arid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qinghai Lake
Qinghai Lake or Ch'inghai Lake, also known by other names, is the largest lake in China. Located in an endorheic basin in Qinghai Province, to which it gave its name, Qinghai Lake is classified as an alkaline salt lake. The lake has fluctuated in size, shrinking over much of the 20th century but increasing since 2004. It had a surface area of , an average depth of , and a maximum depth of in 2008. Names Qinghai is the romanized Standard Chinese pinyin pronunciation of the name Although modern Chinese distinguishes between the colors blue and green, this distinction did not exist in classical Chinese. The color (''qīng'') was a "single" color inclusive of both blue and green as separate shades. (English for ''qīng'' is cyan or turquoise, also linguists have coined the portmanteau "grue" to discuss its existence in Chinese and other languages.) The name is thus variously translated as "Blue Sea", "Green Sea", "Blue-Green Sea", "Blue/Green Sea", etc. For a time after ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Postal Map
The history of the postage stamps and postal history of China is complicated by the gradual decay of Imperial China and the years of civil war and Japanese occupation in the 1930s and 1940s. In modern times, postal delivery is handled by China Post. Early history Regular government postal service is known from the Zhou dynasty in the 1st millennium BC. During the Yuan dynasty under Kublai Khan in the 12th century, China was integrated into the much larger Mongolian Örtöö system. Marco Polo reported that there were 10,000 post stages during that time. In addition, private letters were carried by the Min Hsin Chu, a system of letter guilds ('' hongs''). Later the 1727 Treaty of Kyakhta with Russia provided for the first regular exchange of mail. Qing Dynasty Although postal service in China goes back some 2,500 years, modern postal services were not established until 1877 by the Qing government. A policy of isolation was forcibly ended in the 19th century by the O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orography
Orography is the study of the topographic relief of mountains, and can more broadly include hills, and any part of a region's elevated terrain. Orography (also known as ''oreography'', ''orology'' or ''oreology'') falls within the broader discipline of geomorphology. The term orography comes from the Greek: , hill, , to write. Uses Mountain ranges and elevated land masses have a major impact on global climate. For instance, the elevated areas of East Africa substantially determine the strength of the Indian monsoon.Srinivasan, J., Nanjundiah, Ravi S. and Chakraborty, Arindam (2005Impact of Orography on the Simulation of Monsoon Climate in a General Circulation Model''Indian Institute of Science'' In scientific models, such as general circulation models, orography defines the lower boundary of the model over land. When a river's tributaries or settlements by the river are listed in 'orographic sequence', they are in order from the highest (nearest the source of the river) to the l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gansu
Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan and Loess plateaus and borders Mongolia ( Govi-Altai Province), Inner Mongolia and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south and Shaanxi to the east. The Yellow River passes through the southern part of the province. Part of Gansu's territory is located in the Gobi Desert. The Qilian mountains are located in the south of the Province. Gansu has a population of 26 million, ranking 22nd in China. Its population is mostly Han, along with Hui, Dongxiang and Tibetan minorities. The most common language is Mandarin. Gansu is among the poorest administrative divisions in China, ranking 31st, last place, in GDP per capita as of 2019. The State of Qin originated in what is now southeastern Gansu and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the Geography of Greece, mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Sea of Crete and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin, featuring List of islands of Greece, thousands of islands. The country consists of nine Geographic regions of Greece, traditional geographic regions, and has a population of approximately 10.4 million. Athens is the nation's capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city, followed by Thessaloniki and Patras. Greece is considered the cradle of Western culture, Western civilization, being the birthplace of Athenian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
37° N
The 37th parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 37 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, Africa, Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North America, and the Atlantic Ocean. At this latitude the Sun is visible for 14 hours, 42 minutes during the summer solstice and 9 hours, 37 minutes during the winter solstice. The 37th parallel north is roughly the northern limit of the visibility of Canopus, the second-brightest star of the night sky. Along with the 37th parallel south, it is the latitude at which solar irradiance is closest to the planetary average,See Nadeau, Alice and McGhee, Richard; ‘A simple formula for a planet's mean annual insolation by latitude’; ''Icarus'', volume 291, 15 July 2017, pp. 46-50 with higher solar irradiance equatorward and lower poleward. Around the world Starting at the Prime Meridian and heading eastward, the parallel 37° north passes through: : United States In the United States, the parallel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
