What is the loess of the Yellow River?
Loess often develops into extremely fertile agricultural soil. It is full of minerals and drains water very well. It is easily tilled, or broken up, for planting seeds. Loess usually erodes very slowly—Chinese farmers have been working the loess around the Yellow River for more than a thousand years.
Where the loess soil is found in China?
Abstract. The loess region of northwestern China is located in the middle reaches of the Huanghe River and is mostly composed of the loess plateau. The region has a loess cover largely ranging in thickness from 30 to 80 m.
Which Chinese river is filled with loess?
the Yellow River
The Loess Plateau of China is located in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, and encircled by the Ela Mountains to the west, the Taihang Mountains to the east, the Yin Mountains to the north, and the Qingling and Funiu Mountains to the south (Figure 1).
What is loess and how does it affect the Huang He?
Huang He means “Yellow River.” The river gets its color and its name from the extremely high volume of yellow-brown windblown silt, or loess, that enters the river in its middle reaches as it cuts through the Loess Plateau. The high silt load makes the lower reaches of the river prone to disastrous flooding.
What is loess in ancient China?
Loess, a fine-grained silt that was probably blown there from Mongolia, covers some 275 000 square kilometres of the ancient heartland of China, much of it to a depth of 200 metres or more. The loess is uniquely suitable. for intensive agriculture: it has a fine, uniform structure and being rich.
Why is the loess problematic for the Yellow River?
In China, soil from the Loess Plateau erodes into the Yellow River. This erosion creates problems that have occurred from ancient times to the present. Unfortunately, during the last four decades, too much sediment has threatened the river.
Is loess a rock or soil?
The term loessification has been used by a number of authors to refer to the quasi-pedogenic/quasi-diagenetic processes that result in the typical aggregation of loess; however these mechanisms are rarely described in detail. Depending on the researcher’s background, loess is classified as sediment, soil or rock.
Why is the loess problematic for the river?
In China, soil from the Loess Plateau erodes into the Yellow River. This erosion creates problems that have occurred from ancient times to the present. Unfortunately, during the last four decades, too much sediment has threatened the river. The length of the Yellow River is calculated at approximately 3,400 miles.
What is Chinese loess?
The Chinese Loess Plateau, or simply the Loess Plateau, is a plateau in north-central China formed of loess, a clastic silt-like sediment formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. It is located southeast of the Gobi Desert and is surrounded by the Yellow River.
What kind of soil is loess?
Loess is a sedimentary deposit composed largely of silt-size grains that are loosely cemented by calcium carbonate. It is usually homogeneous and highly porous and is traversed by vertical capillaries that permit the sediment to fracture and form vertical bluffs.
How loess is formed in China?