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Dzungaria
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Dzungaria is a geographical region in northwest China corresponding to the northern half of Xinjiang. It covers approximately 777,000 km², lying mostly within the Xinjiang, and extending into western Mongolia. Formerly the term could cover a wider area, depending on temporary political boundaries. (also Jungaria, Sungaria, Zungaria; Mongolian: ??????? Züüngar, , Dzhungariya)
Junggar Basin
The core of Dzungaria is the triangular Dzungarian Basin with its central Gurbantunggut Desert.
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Encyclopedia
Dzungaria is a geographical region in northwest China corresponding to the northern half of Xinjiang. It covers approximately 777,000 km², lying mostly within the Xinjiang, and extending into western Mongolia. Formerly the term could cover a wider area, depending on temporary political boundaries. (also Jungaria, Sungaria, Zungaria; Mongolian: ??????? Züüngar, , Dzhungariya)
Junggar Basin
The core of Dzungaria is the triangular Dzungarian Basin with its central Gurbantunggut Desert. It is bounded by the Tien Shan on the south, the Altai Mountains on the northeast and the Tarbagatai Mountains on the northwest. The three corners are relatively open. The north corner is the valley of the upper Irtysh River. The west corner is the Dzungarian Gate with its railroad (from 1990). The eastern corner leads to Gansu and the rest of China. In the south an easy pass leads from Ürümqi to the Turfan Depression. In the southwest the Borohoro branch to the Tien Shan separates the basin from the upper Ili River.
The extensive Junggar Basin is in the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang in northwestern China. It is surrounded by mountains. The basin is located between the Mongolian Altai Mountains and Tian Shan to the south. The basin is similar to the larger Tarim Basin on the southern side of the Tian Shan Range. Only a gap in the mountains to the north allows moist air masses to provide the basin lands with enough moisture to remain semi-desert rather than becoming a true desert and allows a thin layer of vegetation to grow. This is enough to sustain populations of wild camels, jerboas, and other wild species.
The Junggar Basin is a structural basin with thick sequences of Paleozoic-Pleistocene rocks with large estimated oil reserves. The Gurbantunggut Desert, China’s second largest, is in the center of the basin. Lake Aibi is the basin's catchment center.
The cold climate of nearby Siberia influences the climate of the Junggar Basin, making the temperature colder s low as -4°F (-20°C) and providing more precipitation, ranging from 3 to 10 inches (80 to 250 mm), compared to the warmer, drier basins to the south. Runoff from the surrounding mountains into the basin supplies several lakes. The ecologically rich habitats traditionally included meadows, marshlands, and rivers. However most of the land is now used for agriculture.
It is a largely steppe and semi-desert basin surrounded by high mountains: the Tian Shan (ancient Mount Imeon) in the south and the Altay in the north. Geologically it is an extension of the Paleozoic Kazakhstan Block and was once part of an independent continent before the Altai mountains formed in the late Paleozoic. It does not contain the abundant minerals of Kazakhstania and may have been a pre-existing continental block before Kazakhstan is formed.
Urumqi, Yining and Karamai are the main cities; other smaller oasis towns dot the piedmont areas.
Prehistory
Dzungaria and its derivatives are used to name a number of pre-historic animals hailing from the rocky outcrops located in an eponymous sedimentary basin of that region, the Junggar Basin.
A recent notable find, in February 2006, is the oldest tyrannosaur fossil unearthed by a team of scientists from George Washington University who were conducting a study in the Junggar Basin. The species, named Guanlong, lived 160 million years ago, more than 90 million years before the famed Tyrannosaurus rex.
Ecology
Dzungaria is home to a semi-desert steppe ecoregion known as the Junggar Basin semi-desert. The vegetation consists mostly of low scrub of Anabasis brevifolia. Taller shrublands of saxaul bush (Haloxylon ammodendron) and Ephedra przewalskii can be found near the margins of the basin. Streams descending from the Tian Shan and Altai ranges support stands of poplar (Populus diversifolia) together with Nitraria roborovsky, N. sibirica, Achnatherum splendens, tamarisk (Tamarix sibirimosissima), and willow (Salix ledebouriana).
The northeastern portion of the Junggar Basin semi-desert lies within Great Gobi National Park, and is home to herds of Asian wild ass (Equus hemionus) and goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa), and wild Bactrian camels (Camelus ferus).
The basin was one of the last habitats of Przewalski's Horse (Equus przewalskii), which is now extinct in the wild.
History
One of the earliest mentions of the Dzungaria region occurs when the Han Dynasty dispatched an explorer to investigate lands to the west. Using the North Silk Road, the northernmost Silk Road trackway of about 2600 kilometres in length, which connected the ancient Chinese capital of Xian to the west over the Wushao Ling Pass to Wuwei and emerging in Kashgar before linking to ancient Parthia. Istämi received the lands of Dzungaria as an inheritance after the death of his father in the latter half of the sixth century AD.
Dzungaria is named after a Mongolian kingdom which existed in Central Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It derived its name from the Dzungars, who were so called because they formed the left wing (züün, left; gar, hand) of the Mongolian army, selfnamed Oirats. It was raised to its highest pitch by Kaldan (also known as Galdan Boshigtu Khan) in the latter half of the 17th century, when repeatedly interfered on territory of Kazakh state, but completely destroyed by the Qing government about 1757-1759. It has played an important part in the history of Mongolia and the great migrations of Mongolian stems westward.
Since 1761, its territory fell mostly to the Qing Empire (Xinjiang - New lands), also known as Uyghurstan, and north-western Mongolia) and partly to Russian Turkestan (earlie Kazakh state provinces of Semirechye- Jetysu and Irtysh river).
Its widest limit included Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, the whole region of the Tian Shan, and in short the greater proportion of that part of Central Asia which extends from 35º to 50º N and from 72º to 97º E.
As a political or geographical term Dzungaria has practically disappeared from the map; but the range of mountains stretching north-east along the southern frontier of the Jeti-su, as the district to the south-east of Lake Balkhash preserves the name of Dzungarian Alatau. It also gave name to Dzungarian Hamsters.
Dzungaria and the Silk Road
A traveler going west from China must go either north of the Tien Shan through Dzungaria or south of the Tien Shan through the Tarim Basin. Trade usually took the south side and migrations the north. Why? The obvious answer is that the Tarim leads to the Ferghana Valley and Iran, while Dzungaria leads only to the open steppe. The difficulty with south side was the high mountains between the Tarim and Ferghana. There is also another reason. The Taklamakan is too dry to support much grass, and therefore nomads when they are not robbing caravans. Its inhabitants live mostly in oases formed where rivers run out of the mountains into the desert. These are inhabited by peasants who are unwarlike and merchants who have an interest in keeping trade running smoothly. Dzungaria has a fair amount of grass, few towns to base soldiers in and no significant mountain barriers to the west. Therefore trade went south and migrations north
People
The population consists of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Mongols, and Han Chinese. Since 1953 there has been a massive influx of Han Chinese to work on water conservation and industrial projects, especially the Karamay oil fields.
Economy
Wheat, barley, oats, and sugar beets are grown, and cattle, sheep, and horses are raised. The fields are irrigated with melted snow from the permanently white-capped mountains.
Dzungaria has deposits of coal, iron, and gold, as well as large oil fields.
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