Instead of gushing out lava, they spit out mud. How much do you know about Xinjiang's mud volcanoes?

The largest active mud volcano group in Asia is in Xinjiang.

Is this news surprising? Today, let’s talk about the mud volcanoes in Xinjiang.

my country's mud volcanoes are mainly distributed in Taiwan and Xinjiang. Among them, the mud volcano group in Wusu City is the largest active mud volcano group in Asia.

The mud volcanoes in Wusu City are distributed in the valleys at the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountains southwest of Wusu, concentrated on a hillside of less than 0.5 square kilometers.

The mud volcano vents have different shapes, such as round and oval. Two kinds of blue-gray and brown-red eruption products are constantly churning in the vents, forming various bubbles and patterns under the sunlight, which are very beautiful.

The vents of each mud volcano are not far apart and the slope is not steep. The ejected mud flows into the valley along the overflow outlet on the north side, forming black mud streams.

How are mud volcanoes formed?

Mud volcanoes, as the name suggests, are volcanoes made of mud. They are called mud because they are indeed made of clay, rock debris, salt powder and other soil; the biggest difference between them and volcanoes is that volcanoes spew out magma, while mud volcanoes spew out mud.

Mud volcanoes are mostly distributed on faults or anticline axes, and the exposed strata are mostly mud sandstone. When a large amount of underground fluid is subjected to huge pressure, the fluid carries mud and sand and gushes out from the weak zones of the crust such as faults, accumulating on the ground to form mud volcanoes.

The formation of a mud volcano requires three conditions: first, there must be head pressure of groundwater; second, there must be a fault or crack from the pressure point to the ground; and finally, there must be mudstone that can become slurry when it comes into contact with water.

How many mud volcanoes are there in the world?

There are more than 2,000 mud volcanoes discovered on land and in shallow seas around the world, mainly distributed in the Alps-Tethys suture zone and the Circum-Pacific belt, and most of them are distributed in the South Caspian Basin.

Mud volcanoes in my country are mainly distributed in Taiwan and Xinjiang. There are also sporadic records of discoveries in the upper reaches of the Tata River on the edge of the Qaidam Basin in Qinghai, in the Qujiang area of ​​the Sichuan Basin, and in southern Jiangsu.

How many mud volcanoes are there in Xinjiang?

Mud volcanoes in Xinjiang are mainly located in the northern foothills of the Tianshan Mountains. The most representative ones are Dushanzi Mud Volcano, Wusu Mud Volcano, Aktomuji Mud Volcano, etc. Among them, Baiyanggou Town in Wusu is home to the largest mud volcano group in Asia, and Sailiketi Pasture has the largest mud volcano pile in Asia.