Loess Plateau

From Freepedia

The Loess Plateau covers an area of some 640,000 km² in the upper and middle parts of China's Yellow River. Loess is the name for the silty soil that has been deposited by wind storms on the plateau over the ages. Loess is a highly erosion-prone soil that is susceptible to the forces of wind and water. The Loess Plateau and its dusty soil cover almost all of Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces and parts of others.

The Loess Plateau provides simple yet insulated shelter from the cold winter and hot summer in the region, as homes called yaodong (Chinese: 窑洞) were often carved into the loess soil; some families still persist in modern times on this type of shelter. The yaodongs that are best-known to the world are perhaps those in Yan'an where the Communist Party led Mao Zedong headquartered in 1930s. When Edgar Snow, the author of Red Star Over China, visited Mao and his party, he lived in a yaodong.

The Loess Plateau was highly fertile and easy to farm in ancient times, which contributed to the development of early Chinese civilization around the Loess Plateau.

Hundreds of years of deforestation and over-grazing, exacerbated by China's population increase, have resulted in degenerated ecosystems, desertification and poor local economies.

The Loess Plateau was formed over long geologic times, and scientists have derived valuable information about global climate change from samples taken from the entire deep layer of its silty soil.