The first book demonstrates two unique historical perspectives and richness from the badlands in Taiwan, the earth science history and the history of human ecology.

*How does the “Moon World”–badlands tell the story of Taiwan with time, processes, materials, and depth of formation?
*What makes the barren environment attract people and wild animals to live here and create an ecological ark?
*Why did the hidden southwest badlands become the hometown of cultural heritage Song Jiangzhen (martial arts) and Chief Shopkeeper (cooking art)?

It offers background knowledge on badlands especially focused on mudstone badlands, their terrain and ecology, economic landscape, the cultural heritage, ecological discoveries, and the environmental conservation movement nowadays in Kaohsiung and Tainan Mudstone Badlands Geoparks.

Geopark is an initiative launched by UNESCO in 1999, aimed at raising awareness of connection between foundational geology and human life, society, as well as civilization, in which the concept of “Earth Science for Society” was highlighted. Following the spirit of the UNESCO global geoparks, Taiwan geoparks-network was facilitated by the policies, government, academic fields and regional communities forces for decades.

The terrain of the “Moon World” that people in Taiwan often hear is like an alien planet, and its official name is Badlands. Badlands are characterized by the fact that the surface is extremely vulnerable to water erosion, that presenting a bare, rugged, and broken landscape all making it difficult for vegetation.

There are many extreme frontier badlands in Taiwan, of which there are three more prominent ones. One is in the shallow mountainous area in the southwest of the island, roughly extending from Tainan to Kaohsiung; the other is in the southeast, mainly concentrated in Liji, Taitung; The conglomerate badlands of Huoyan Mountain in Sanyi, Miaoli are easier to see. They respectively show the different tectonics and geological origins of the island.

The largest and most representative badland terrain on Taiwan is the area from Tainan to Kaohsiung in the southwest. It covers an area of more than 1,000 square kilometers and is about 3,000 to 4,000 meters deep. Although this mudstone badland accounts for about 3% of the country’s land, it has surprisingly created multiple perspectives for viewing and understanding Taiwan, and it has sealed the microcosm of Taiwan’s 400-year-old ethnic group development, and it has unexpectedly become an ecological ark in a shallow mountain area.

Starting from the large-scale geological scale, this book tells you how this mudstone badlands located in the western Lushan belt, how it witnessed the structural changes before and after Taiwan’s orogeny by six million years ago, and how it reflects the characteristics of Taiwan’s environment.

Although the badland environment seems uninhabitable, history tells us that humans have been living here for hundreds of years. This book combs through the past four hundred years. How people develop, choose settlements, and migrate under the environment of staggered valleys and space rotations? how people form short-term or continuous, stable or changing, and time-consuming and diverse lifestyles? This is a process of mutual exploration and adaptation between people and the environment.

Water sources are extremely important in badland areas. Through the dual axis of badland ecological diversity and environmental protection movement, this book traces the flow route and shows the preservation method of water that facilitated by local natural and human forces.

Citizen scientist “La Saipan”(gossip members) and creatures are powerful forces here taking care of water and ecology, such as thorny bamboo, land crab（Geothelphusa ancylophallus）, eastern grass owl（Tyto longimembris pithecops）, sika deer, pangolin, crab-eating mongoose, etc..

Although all kinds of tribulations continue to challenge the relationship between people and nature in the badlands, a group of people and creatures continue to move forward. They are reversing our imaginations and presenting a contemporary perspective to the public, the SDGs sustainable living model, we now understand it with geological parks.

We hope for readers to not only become familiar with the unique features of mudstone badlands, but also appreciate the idea of “pursuing good fortunes and avoiding disasters” by implementing the concept of geopark.