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Hoh Xil

Hoh Xil
Hoh Xil.jpg
Hoh Xil in August
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese 可可西里
Traditional Chinese 可可西里
Literal meaning Blue ridge (in Mongolic)
Tibetan-origin name
Simplified Chinese 阿卿贡嘉
Traditional Chinese 阿卿貢嘉
Literal meaning Lord of ten thousand mountains
Tibetan name
Tibetan ཧོ་ཧོ་ཞི་ལི
ཨ་ཆེན་གངས་རྒྱལ
Mongolian name
Mongolian Cyrillic Хөх шил
Mongolian script ᠬᠥᠬᠡ ᠰᠢᠯ

Hoh Xil or Kekexili, (Mongolian for "Blue Ridge", also Aqênganggyai for "Lord of Ten Thousand Mountains"), is an isolated region in the northwestern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China. It is China's least and the world's third-least populated area.

The region covers 83,000 square kilometres at an average elevation of 4,800 metres above sea level, stretches in a meridional (east-west) direction between the Tanggula and Kunlun mountain chains in the border areas of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, northwest China's Qinghai Province and China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The southeastern part of the Hoh Xil, drained by the Chumar River, is one of the major headwater sources of the Yangtze River. The rest of the region is endorheic, with drainage to numerous isolated lakes; this area is sometimes described by hydrologists as the "Hoh Xil lake district". 45,000 square kilometres of the Hoh Xil region, at an average elevation of 4,600 metres, were designated a national nature reserve in 1995.

Hoh Xil is volcanic. Surrounding Unnamed volcanic field contains a number of late-Cenozoic volcanoes. Several Hawaiian-style volcanoes are present in this area. Bamaoqiongzong covers an area of 300 km2 and contains a perfectly preserved edifice NE of the summit and a lava flow that overlies Quaternary lake deposits . The Bamaoqiongzong area contains peralkaline phonolitic and foiditic rocks. Yongbohu contains five dacitic, trachyandesitic and andesitic vents. Qiangbaqian covers a broad area along the southern border of the Kunlun mountain range. A cone in the Kekexili caldera, once thought to be observed in eruption on a satellite photo in 1973, is now considered not to have been historically active.


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