Kuznetsk Depression is located among mountains of Southern Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

: Kuznetsk Alatau

Kuznetsk Alatau

Kuznetsk Alatau is a mountain range, South Siberia, Russia between Kuznetsk Depression and Minusinsk Depression. Length: about 300 km., elevation: up to . It is part of the mountain system of Central Asia. See Geography of South-Central Siberia....

 to the Northeast, Salair Ridge

Salair Ridge

Salair Ridge is an eroded plateau-type highland in the Southwestern Siberia, Russia, particularly in Altai Krai, Kemerovo and Novosibirsk Oblast. It is a natural continuation of Altai Mountains and separates the Kuznetsk Depression from the Ob River Plain to the southwest. See Geography of...

 to the Southwest, and Mountainous Shoria to the South. Elevation

Elevation

The elevation of a geographic location is its height above a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface ....

 up to 500 m, area: 70,000 km², length: 400 km, width: 120 km.

It is split by a network of river valleys. Major rivers are Tom River

Tom River

Tom is a river in Russia, a right tributary of the Ob. Its length is 540 miles . Its source is in the Abakan mountains , and it flows northward through the Kuznetsk Basin...

, Inya River

Inya River

Inya is a river in Kemerovo and Novosibirsk Oblasts of Russia. It is a right tributary of the Ob River. It is 663 km long, with a drainage basin of 17 600 km²....

 and other tributaries of Ob River

Ob River

The Ob River , also Obi, is a major river in western Siberia, Russia and is the world's seventh longest river. It is the westernmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean .The Gulf of Ob is the world's longest estuary.-Names:The Ob is known to the Khanty people as the...

.

The central part has several mesozoic

Mesozoic

The Mesozoic era is an interval of geological time from about 250 million years ago to about 65 million years ago. It is often referred to as the age of reptiles because reptiles, namely dinosaurs, were the dominant terrestrial and marine vertebrates of the time...

 basalt

Basalt

Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

 mountain ridges of height 600–740 m. (Taradanov's Ridge, Saltymakov's Ridge, Karakan Mountains).

The depression contains the famous coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

-mining Kuznetsk Basin

Kuznetsk Basin

The Kuznetsk Basin in southwestern Siberia, Russia, is one of the largest coal mining areas in the world, covering an area of around . It lies in the Kuznetsk Depression between Tomsk and Novokuznetsk in the basin of the Tom River...

. Main cities are Kemerovo

Kemerovo

Kemerovo is an industrial city in Russia, situated on the Tom River, east-northeast of Novosibirsk. It is the administrative center of Kemerovo Oblast, located in the major coal mining region of the Kuznetsk Basin...

, Novokuznetsk

Novokuznetsk

Novokuznetsk is a city in Kemerovo Oblast, Russia. It serves as the administrative center of Novokuznetsky District, but it is not administratively a part of it...

, Prokopyevsk

Prokopyevsk

Prokopyevsk is a city in Kemerovo Oblast, Russia. Population: It was founded in 1918 as the settlement of Prokopyevsky from the existing villages of Monastyrskoye and Prokopyevskoye, and was granted town status and renamed in 1931....

.

See also

• Geography of South-Central Siberia
  Geography of South-Central Siberia
  This article covers the region of Siberia west of Lake Baikal and north of the Altai Mountains. It is intended totie together a number of articles that are hard to understand in isolation....
  
  
• Minusinsk Depression
• Tuva Depression
  Tuva Depression
  Tuva Depression is located among mountains of South Central Siberia — Tannu-Ola Mountains, Eastern Sayans and Western Sayans, and the Altay Mountains region, part of a combination of raised lands and depressions....