Jixian National Geopark

Jixian National Geopark

Jixian National Geopark covers an area of 342 square kilometers, including the middle and Upper Proterozoic geological nature reserve, Baxian Mountain quartz peak forest Canyon Scenic Area, Jiushan mountain quartz sandstone peak forest scenic area, Huangyaguan cliff Landform Scenic Area, Panshan granite Landform Scenic Area, Jiulong Mountain carbonate peak cluster scenic area, and Fujun mountain geological structure relics scenic area. Among them, the "Middle Upper Proterozoic" is the best preserved one with the highest geological value. The pictures of this topic are all taken there. All the pictures here can be enlarged by clicking.

Geological survey

There is a crust on the surface of the earth called the crust, on which both the land and the sea floor we live. The average thickness of this crust is about 30 kilometers. In the upper part of this shell, there are many banded layered rocks, and stratum refers to these rocks. We often see layers of rock on the cliff, which is what the strata show us when they come out of the surface. How, when and why the strata are formed are all the problems that geologists need to study. The study of strata can not only help us to further understand the earth, but also help us to find all kinds of mineral treasures and increase the interest of tourism.

It is generally believed that after the early formation of the earth, it was very flat - the mountains were not very high, and the water was not very deep. In the later long days, many things sank to the bottom of the sea and piled up thick, one layer after another. After a long time, these sedimentary materials were gradually pressed into rocks, becoming one of the three largest rocks on the earth - sedimentary rocks. Sedimentary rocks can be seen everywhere on land, indicating that in the distant past these places were once oceans.

Since these rocks are deposited layer by layer, there must be a time sequence. Geologists believe that the original depositional position of the strata is generally horizontal, with the older one below and the later one above. That is to say, when we see a layer upon layer of cliffs, we can assert that the more ancient the rock is below.

This is a simple statement. It only involves the vertical time relationship between the upper and lower strata. In fact, the stratum also has a complex horizontal relationship. But we're not going to talk about that complexity here.

Geologic Age

People determine the sequence of rock layers, and then they have to calculate their age, which is to determine the geological age. The fossils in the sedimentary rocks are the flowers, grass, fish and insects of that year. They became rocks with other sediments, but left a historical imprint. There are different fossils in different periods, so there is biostratigraphy. There is also a radioisotope decay fission dating technique, which provides an accurate method for dating rocks. Some radioactive chemical substances will become another thing after a certain period of time, which is called decay fission. The time of formation of a rock or fossil can be determined by detecting the amount of decaying and fissioning materials in a rock or fossil. Based on these techniques, a representative geological year was drawn. We often say that dinosaurs lived in the Jurassic, which is the name of a time period in the geological chronology. With this geological age representative, people can determine the formation age of a stratum and name it according to the detection and analysis when they face a stratum. For example, "Middle Upper Proterozoic stratigraphic section".

Internal force action

Many years after the sedimentary rocks sank under the water, the crust changed dramatically. The sea becomes the mulberry field, and the plain rises the mountain. The earth is no longer smooth. This is orogeny in geological history. Orogeny has made geological information accumulated for hundreds of millions of years drill out of the ground and put it in front of us. It has also made the original basic level of rock layer become distorted and tilted, and even separated and moved. This situation continues to this day. We know that wind, rain, snow and ice have a destructive effect on rocks, which can be called weathering and external force; earthquakes and volcanoes can also act on rocks, making them lose their original appearance and even become another kind of rock, which is called internal force. These two functions have been shaping the earth for hundreds of millions of years. When it turns rocky peaks into emerald trees and green mountains, it also obliterates the clear geological information brought to us by the outcropping rocks.

Coincidentally, in some places of the world where people can go, there are still ancient strata that have not been eroded. They're like pages of books coming out of the ground for us to read. Such places are called geological sections. Jixian National Geopark hundreds of square kilometers, there are many such geological "scroll".

Address: Jixian

Longitude: 117.53981375462

Latitude: 40.186224029287

Tel: 022-23351452

Tour time: 4-5 hours

Admission information: the park is free, and the admission fee is 40.00 yuan

Opening hours: from April to November every year

05:30~18:00

Chinese PinYin : Ji Xian Guo Jia Di Zhi Gong Yuan