Dabie Mountains

The Dabie Mountains and Dabie Shan (大别山; Pinyin: Dabie Shān ) is a low mountain range in China, in the border area of the three provinces of Hubei, Henan and Anhui.

Location

It runs from northwest to southeast and is the watershed between the rivers Huai He and Yangtze River. Its highest peak reaches 1852 m and is located in the northeast of the mountain. The Dabie Shan forms the eastern foothills of the Qinling Mountains and ends abruptly in the southeast of the active Tan -Lu fault. It finds its geological- morphological continued on the Shandong Peninsula and in central Korea.

Geology

The mountain range forms the largest known deposits of ultra-high pressure rocks on Earth. The Dabie Shan results from the Triassic collision between the South and North China block. Here, the continental rocks of the South China block an ultrahigh -pressure metamorphism undergone (p > 2.8 GPa) were. In the Early Cretaceous (ca. 140-120 Ma) were intruded the Triassic ultrahigh-pressure rocks from numerous granitic melts. The present morphology of the Dabie Shan owes mainly late Cretaceous and känozischen uplift and erosion processes. Witnesses of these processes form the Cretaceous - Cenozoic sedimentary basins that surround the Dabie Shan to the south, east and north.