The world's first relief map of the South Pole drawn by experts of Wuhan University was published on July 9, according to peopledaily.com.cn.

It is a mountainous land over an area of 3,200 square meters, 400 to 500 km away from the Zhongshan Station. Due to its complicated landform, it is one of the few areas in the South Pole beyond the formal research of any countries. So quite a few countries have got plans to set up their expedition stations here.

From 1999 to 2000, researchers of the Chinese expedition team set out from the Zhongshan Station two times on foot and fulfilled the first scientific research of the land in the history of human beings. In January of 2000, experts from the Wuhan University conducted an extensive expedition for mapping in this area and finally accomplished the task of drawing a relief map of 120 square kilometers of this mountainous land of the South Pole. During the research, they established two GPS stations and erected three permanent bronze signs of Chinese mapping in this part of the land.

In experts' view, the Relief Map is an important breakthrough in the research of geographic structure of the South Pole as well as the earth.