LU-LIANG MOUNTAINS

Chinese (Wade-Giles) L-liang Shan, or (Pinyin) Lliang Shan, range in Shansi province, China. The name L-liang Mountains is generally used for the whole system of ranges in the west and southwest of Shansi, separating the north-south section of the Huang Ho (Yellow River) from the valley of its tributary, the Fen River. Properly, however, the name applies to the northern part of this range, lying to the west of the basin at T'ai-yan, where the nomenclature also refers to one of a cluster of peaks (Mount L-liang). The highest peak, Kuan-ti Mountain, reaches 9,288 feet (2,831 m). The southern part of the range, which has a more marked southwest-northeast axis, is properly called the Huo-yen Range. The ranges have a mean elevation of 5,000 to 6,500 feet (1,500 to 2,000 m), the highest area being in the north. The higher areas of the chain are free of loess (wind-deposited silt) covering, but the western side of the chain, reaching down to the Huang Ho valley, is thickly loess-covered and shows the characteristic highly dissected landscape of the Shensi province loess areas. Structurally, the ranges consist of a series of synclines (folds in the rocks in which the strata dip inward from each side toward the axis), with axes between north-south and northeast-southwest formed during the Jurassic mountain-building period broken up by a series of fault troughs. Many of the rocks in these ranges are of the Carboniferous and Permian periods (360 to 245 million years ago) and contain rich coal reserves. These coal deposits are worked on a large scale at Fen-hsi. The ranges originally supported a sparse forest, but most of the area is now covered with grass and low scrub.