Yinchuan Plain (), also called the Yinchuan–Wuzhong Plain or Xitao Plain (西套平原)
or Ningxia Plain (宁夏平原), is a
plain located in the north central part of
Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region,
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
.
Since ancient times, Yinchuan Plain has been well developed in irrigation agriculture, so it has been hailed as the "southern type of scene in the northern frontier" (塞上江南) and "the barn in the northern frontier" (塞上谷仓).
Yinchuan Plain is the largest plain in
Ningxia and an important commercial grain base in
Northwest China.
It is a
Cenozoic
The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configura ...
fault basin covered by about 2000 meters of unconsoli-dated
Quaternary
The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ...
deposits.
Geography
Yinchuan Plain is located on the
banks of the Yellow River in the northern part of
Ningxia, China
Ningxia (,; , ; alternately romanized as Ninghsia), officially the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (NHAR), is an autonomous region in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. Formerly a province, Ningxia was incorporated into Gansu in 1 ...
, with
Shizuishan in the north,
Loess Plateau in the south, the
Ordos Plateau in the east, and the
Helan Mountains in the west.
Irrigation
Yinchuan Plain has a history of more than 2000 years of diverting water from the
Yellow River for irrigation.
References
{{coord missing, Ningxia
Plains
Plains of China
Landforms of Ningxia
Landforms of Asia
Regions of China
Geography of Asia
Geography of Western China