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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Kazakstan
Index
With an area of about 2,717,300 square kilometers, Kazakstan is more
than twice the combined size of the other four Central Asian states. The
country borders Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan to the south;
Russia to the north; Russia and the Caspian Sea to the west; and China's
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to the east.
Topography and Drainage
There is considerable topographical variation within Kazakstan. The
highest elevation, Khan Tengri Mountain, on the Kyrgyz border in the Tian
Shan range, is 6,995 meters; the lowest point, at Karagiye, in the Caspian
Depression in the west, is 132 meters below sea level (see fig. 2). Only
12.4 percent of Kazakstan is mountainous, with most of the mountains
located in the Altay and Tian Shan ranges of the east and northeast,
although the Ural Mountains extend southward from Russia into the northern
part of west-central Kazakstan. Many of the peaks of the Altay and Tian
Shan ranges are snow covered year-round, and their run-off is the source
for most of Kazakstan's rivers and streams.
Except for the Tobol, Ishim, and Irtysh rivers (the Kazak names for
which are, respectively, Tobyl, Esil, and Ertis), portions of which flow
through Kazakstan, all of Kazakstan's rivers and streams are part of
landlocked systems. They either flow into isolated bodies of water such as
the Caspian Sea or simply disappear into the steppes and deserts of
central and southern Kazakstan. Many rivers, streams, and lakes are
seasonal, evaporating in summer. The three largest bodies of water are
Lake Balkhash, a partially fresh, partially saline lake in the east, near
Almaty, and the Caspian and Aral seas, both of which lie partially within
Kazakstan.
Some 9.4 percent of Kazakstan's land is mixed prairie and forest or
treeless prairie, primarily in the north or in the basin of the Ural River
in the west. More than three-quarters of the country, including the entire
west and most of the south, is either semidesert (33.2 percent) or desert
(44 percent). The terrain in these regions is bare, eroded, broken
uplands, with sand dunes in the Qizilqum (red sand; in the Russian form,
Kyzylkum) and Moyunqum (in the Russian form, Moin Kum) deserts, which
occupy south-central Kazakstan. Most of the country lies at between 200
and 300 meters above sea level, but Kazakstan's Caspian shore includes
some of the lowest elevations on Earth.
Data as of March 1996
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