In ancient times, the area surrounding Sun Moon Lake was known as “Shuishalian”, meaning “where water and sand meet”. The area covered nearly half of what is today Nantou County , including the towns of Zhushan, Lugu, Mingjian, Shuili, Jiji, Puli, Yuchi, Renai, and Guoxing. |
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Located near the town of Yuchi , at the foot of Taiwan 's Central Mountain Range, Sun Moon Lake is centred between the island's overlapping high mountains to the east and its plains to the west.
Sun Moon Lake stands at an
elevation of 748 metres. With a depth of metres, a circumference of 37 kilometres and a total size of 5.4 square kilometres, it is Taiwan 's biggest lake.
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Sun Moon Lake , Toushe, Yuchi and Puli are all basins. Taiwan 's geologic development produced a rugged terrain with a variety of basins that gathered water and formed lakes.
As the land eroded, many lakes dried out and became the rich and fertile basin plains. Such was the course of development of the Puli and Toushe basins.
Because Sun Moon Lake is positioned at a high elevation, it is less affected by basin segmentation and river erosion. As the highest basin in Shuishalian, Sun Moon Lake naturally gets a fair amount of rain from the surrounding mountain areas and only releases a small amount of water. In this way, it retains many of the same features it has had since the time the surrounding mountains were formed. |
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