Xi'an is flat, yes

Xi'an sits on the great loess plateau of China and is mostly pretty flat. I've seen loess before--mainly in Alaska, but that is nothing compared to the loess plateau here. Criss-crossing it by high-speed train in the past week has been a revelation.

Loess plain near Luo Yang

Loess has been a long-time interest of mine, as it is the "medium" which records the variations of the Himalayan monsoon strength, which I have used to look at the dynamics of Neogene climate variations.

While touring around Xi'an, one local told me that the area was so flat, every time you see a mound or hill, it always turns out to be somebody's tomb . . .

. . . like this one.

Like all cities in China, Xi'an is growing monstrously. The photo below can't capture the scale of the construction, but the area covered by this new apartment development must have covered a square mile, composed of dozens of towers.

What kind of mound will they leave in the future, I wonder?

Travelling around Xi'an

I've been in Xi'an the last few days, which you may know as the site of the terracotta warriors. Internet is really up-and-down here.

This week has been the Chinese national holiday, so the crowds at all the local sites have been incredible. It was all-out-battle to bring you these photos.

This photo was especially hard to get, as it seemed all 8 million citizens of Xi'an were fighting to get to the same spot.

This is how the warriors are actually found. They have to be rebuilt. The tomb was sacked only a few years after it was built, as the following dynasty discredited the former emperor--including destroying his power in the afterlife by destroying his spectral army.

If you view the goal of this project to boost China's GDP, then the warriors were first built, then destroyed, and are again currently being rebuilt. Three projects in one!

More wreckage, including a chariot wheel.

And the chariot it came from.

Annual post on Arctic sea ice

Once again, it's time for The World Complex post on Arctic sea ice extent, viewed through the lens of a reconstructed state space.

The minimum extent for sea ice this year appears to have been reached on September 17. This extent is marginally below the extent from last year.

This figure has not changed significantly from last year. We see no evidence of a breakout out from the declining trend line. The slope of the trend line I have drawn is a little shallower than it was last year.

As before, I do not see any evidence to cause me to discard the hypothesis that the change in ice extent since the mid-1980s represents a change from one area of stability to another. What is still uncertain is whether this new area of stability represents a brief respite in a function that is heading to zero, or whether it is a part of normal long-term cyclical behaviour.

The horizontal lines labelled 2015 and 2016 show the level of the ordinate of the state space in those years. 

Gold still number one . . .

. . . in exploration expenditures, according to Wilburn and Stanley (2014).

It's been awhile since I updated this info here, and actually forgot about it when the data became available earlier this year amidst my life falling apart and my relocation to China.

Gold is still the principal goal of exploration--but my eyes may detect a long-term trend. Mayhap that dominance is decreasing. It is still a long way from the heyday of life when expenditures on gold exploration were dwarfed by exploration for base (pdf) metals.

The copper results have not been reported independently since 2005, so I have assumed that Cu expenditures are 58% of total base metal exploration costs since then--that number representing the average value for that ratio over the preceding nine years. The exploration expenditure on copper over the last nine years is therefore an estimate.

Reference: Wilburn, D. R., and Stanley, K. A., 2014. Annual Exploration Review 2013, Mining Engineering, v. 66 (5); 18-39. Lots of other good info in this article (subscription required)

Lands that time forgot--urban farms in central China

The rapidly growing "wealthy" areas of China have surrounded and bypassed pockets of underdevelopment in most major cities.

Some of these areas are about 2 km on a side, but surrounded by 8-lane highways. The farms themselves look rustic, but they are surrounded by apartment blocks.

Less than a kilometre from major development . . .

Charming, rustic scenes not far from the latest shopping malls!