DISCOVERY OF QUATERNARY REMNANTS OF GLACIATION IN THE NORTHERN SEGMENT OF THE LULIANG MOUNTAINS,NINGWU,SHANXI,AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

Lying at an average elevation of~2000 m above sea level and a relative elevation of a few hundred to about one thousand meters, the northern segment of the Lüliang Mountains, Ningwu, Shanxi, belongs to a medium mountain area.In the area Quaternary remnants of glaciation are very well developed and there are a great variety of types with distinctive features.They include U-valleys, knifeedge crests, horns, cirques and firn-basins, as well as many glacial erratic boulders, outwash sediments, moulins, deformed pebbles and streak pebbles in U-valleys.The discovery of abundant Quaternary remnants of glaciation in the northern segment of the Lüliang Mountains, Ningwu, Shanxi, not only proves the existence of many Quaternary glacial movements in the medium and low mountain areas in eastern China, but, as the scale of the glaciers are larger than was expected, the discovery also provides an important basis for the study of the paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental evolution and important data and evidence for the division and correlation of China's Quaternary glacial stages.