Wheat,
barley,
oats, and
sugar beets are grown, and
cattle,
sheep, and
horses are raised in Dzungaria. The fields are irrigated with melted snow from the permanently white-capped mountains. Dzungaria has deposits of
coal,
gold, and
iron, as well as large
oil fields.
Dzungarian Basin The core of Dzungaria is the triangular
Dzungarian Basin, also known as Junggar Basin (), with its central
Gurbantünggüt Desert. It is bounded by the
Tarbagatai Mountains to the northwest, the
Altai Mountains to the northeast, and the Tian Shan mountains to the south. The three corners are relatively open. The northern corner is the valley of the upper
Irtysh River. The western corner is the
Dzungarian Gate, a historically important gateway between Dzungaria and the
Kazakh Steppe; presently, a highway and a
railway (opened in 1990) run through it, connecting China with Kazakhstan. The eastern corner of the basin 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 tall
Borohoro Mountains branch of the Tian Shan separates the basin from the upper
Ili River. 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 like most of the Tarim Basin and allows a thin layer of vegetation to grow. This is enough to sustain populations of wild
camels,
jerboas, and other wild species. The Dzungarian 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. The Dzungarian basin does not have a single
catchment center. The northernmost section of Dzungaria is part of the basin of the
Irtysh River, which ultimately drains into the
Arctic Ocean. The rest of the region is split into a number of
endorheic basins. In particular, south of the Irtysh, the
Ulungur River ends up in the (presently)
endorheic Lake Ulungur. The Southwestern part of the Dzungarian basin drains into the
Aibi Lake. In the west-central part of the region, streams flow into (or toward) a group of endorheic lakes that include
Lake Manas and
Lake Ailik. During the region's geological past, a much larger lake (the "Old Manas Lake") was located in the area of today's Manas Lake; it was fed not only by the streams that presently flow toward it but also by the Irtysh and Ulungur, which too were flowing toward the Old Manas Lake at the time.{{citation|journal=Journal of Arid Land|year=2010|volume=2|issue=3|pages=167–173|title=Tectonic geomorphological characteristics for evolution of the Manas Lake The cold climate of nearby Siberia influences the climate of the Dzungarian Basin, making the temperature colder—as low as —and providing more precipitation, ranging from , 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
Altai 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 Kazakhstan and may have been a pre-existing continental block before the Kazakhstan Block was formed.
Ürümqi,
Yining and
Karamai are the main cities; other smaller
oasis towns dot the piedmont areas. ==Ecology==