Its basin is bounded in the west by the
Turan Range and the river
Zeya, to the south by the
Amur, to the east by the
Bureya Range, the rivers
Urmi and
Amgun, and to the north by the
Ezop Range and several rivers that flow northeastwards into the
Sea of Okhotsk. There are no cities on the river, the largest settlements on the river are
Novy Urgal on the
Baikal Amur Mainline and,
Novobureysky and
Bureya, both on the
Trans-Siberian Railway. The
Tyrma is a left tributary that crosses the railway south from Novy Urgal at the town of Tyrma. The
Chegdomyn coal fields are north of Novy Urgal. The
Bureya hydro power plant holds back middle stream of the river and mitigates extremal surge events during summer rainy seasons. The counter-regulating
Nizhne-Bureiskaya HPP was built in 2017 and is located downstream of the Bureiskaya HPP.
M58 highway (Russia) crosses it on a bridge. ==Landslide in December 2018==