page_title: Yu Shan
section_title: Geography and geology
hierarchical_section_title: Yu Shan / Geography and geology
caption_attribution_description: English: Map from Formosa (Taiwan) 1:50,000 AMS Series L792
context_page_description: Yu Shan or Yushan, also known as Mount Jade, Jade Mountain, or Mount Yu, and known under Japanese rule as Mount Niitaka, is the highest mountain on Taiwan at 3,952 m above sea level, giving Taiwan the 4th-highest maximum elevation of any island in the world. It is the highest point in the western Pacific region outside of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Yushan and surrounding mountains belong to Yushan Range. The area was once in the ocean; it rose to its current height because of the Eurasian Plate's movement over the Philippine Sea Plate.
  The mountains are now protected as the Yushan National Park. The national park is Taiwan's largest, highest and least accessible national park. It contains the largest tract of wilderness remaining in Taiwan and is also valued for its pristine forests and faunal diversity, including many endemic species. On July 21, 2009, Yushan was elected one of 28 finalists in the New7Wonders of Nature voting campaign. It even had held the top position in the “Mountains and Volcanoes” category on the list of first round voting of the 77 nominees ended on July 7, 2009.
context_section_description: The island of Taiwan is situated at the intersection of two tectonic plates – the Eurasian Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate. Even as “recently” as the late Paleozoic (some 250 million years ago), the land here was still but a sedimentary seabed layered with silt and sand. As the two plates began pressing against each other, the land buckled, bent, and created the landscape – 165 mountains higher than 3,000 m (9,800 ft) above sea level on a relatively small island (38th largest in the world).
  Yushan is also notable in containing the highest point on the Tropic of Cancer and the only point on that circle of latitude where there is any evidence of Quaternary glaciation. As recently as seventeen thousand years ago, permanent ice caps existed throughout Taiwan's highest mountains and extended owing to the wet climate down to 2,800 m (9,190 ft); whereas currently, the nearest glaciers to the Tropic of Cancer are in Mexico on the Iztaccíhuatl volcano.
  The ocean waters off Taiwan's east coast are deep; in fact, submarine slopes plunge down to the Pacific Ocean at a grade of 1:10 and the ocean reaches a depth of more than 4,000 m (13,100 ft) about 50 km (30 mi) from the coast.
caption: Map of Yu Shan (labeled as NIITAKA-YAMA) and surrounding area (1944)
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