Zhangye Danxia

The Zhangye Danxia Landform, in Gansu Province, China, is an area of vividly banded, multicolored sandstone and siltstone hills, whose striped red, orange, yellow and green appearance comes from layers of mineral-rich sediment, including iron and trace elements, deposited over roughly 24 million years and later exposed by tectonic uplift. The alternating mineral composition and oxidation states of each layer give the rock its distinct coloration, and subsequent weathering and erosion by wind and water have sculpted the layered rock into rounded ridges, gullies and terraces that display the banding clearly, a landform type geologists call Danxia after similar red sandstone terrain first studied at Mount Danxia in Guangdong. The site was inscribed as part of the China Danxia UNESCO World Heritage property in 2010.