
The province lies on the northeastern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in west China, bordering Gansu and Sichuan provinces, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region. As the origin of the Yangtze, Yellow, and Lancang rivers, the fourth largest in China. Its territory includes 3.86 million hectares of grassland, 590,000 hectares of cultivated land and 266,000 hectares of forest .