Geography of Wanzhou District

Wanzhou District is located in the east margin of the Sichuan Basin and the north-east of Chongqing. It covers an area of 3457 square kilometers (the area under cultivation is 1 million mu, in which the field takes 0.5849 million mu, the farmland higher than 25 degrees takes 0.5014 million mu and the dry land takes 0.3249 million mu of the farmland). The urban area is 32.5 square kilometers. The landscape here is characterized by rolling hills, the Shaping Peak of Puzi County is the highest in the District and approaches to 1762 meters above sea level; the lowest point is close to the Yangtze River in the Huangbai County and it is only 106 meters above the sea level. The Caixiaoya of the Fengshan Mountain in Gaosheng County in the northwest of the district is 1373.3 meters above the sea level. The opposite high is 184.5 meters and 1266.8 meters respectively. The low hills and the intermontane land take one forth of the total area respectively. There is little and scattered platform and flat land in this district.

Geography of Wanzhou District - Climate

Wanzhou District is a sub-tropical moist monsoon climate and has four distinctive seasons. It has a warm and smoggy winter, hot and dry summer, early spring with a unstable temperature(the temperature goes up quickly but unstable), and a long autumn with a lot of rain. Wanzhou District has a moderate climate, the frost-free period is long, and there is a lot of rainfall and sunshine and snows rarely. The average temperature here is 17.7 centigrade; the average maximum temperature is 19.0 centigrade in 1982, and the average mean temperature is 17.6 centigrade in 1974.The highest temperature in these years is 41 centigrade(August 26,1972), the lowest temperature in these years is 3.7 centigrade under zero(January 27,1955 and December 15, 1975). The average annual sunshine hour is 1484.4 hours. The most sunshine hours in a year is 1713 hours, the least sunshine hours in a year is 924 hours. The annual precipitation here is 1243 millimeters; the maximum precipitation is 1549.6 millimeters in 1982 and the minimum precipitation is 981.9 millimeters in 1976; the average evaporation from water surface is 620 millimeters and the total quantity of the evaporation a year approaches 1.085 billion cubic meters according to statistics provided by Datankou Hydrological Station.