Uvs Nuur Basin

UNESCO World Heritage Site

Ubsunur Hollow Uvs Lake Basin
Name as inscribed on the World Heritage List
Ubsunur Hollow view from space (Landsat-7, 2002-08-08)
Location	Mongolia and the Russian Federation
Type	Natural
Criteria	ix, x
Reference	769
UNESCO region	Asia
Inscription history
Inscription	2003 (27th Session)

Ubsunur Hollow (also Uvs Nuur Basin or Uvs Lake Basin; Mongolian: Увс нуурын хотгор, Uws núrīn hotgor) is a fragile mountain endorheic basin or hollow located on the territorial border of Mongolia and the Republic of Tuva in the Russian Federation, named after Uvs Lake, a large, shallow and very saline lake in the basin's center. Several smaller lakes are scattered throughout. It is part of a combination of raised lands and hollows located throughout the Tannu-Ola and Altai mountainous regions. Here, the world's most northern desert meets the Northern Hemisphere's most southern tundra zone. The Ubsunur Hollow was inscribed on the World Heritage Site in 2003.

The total area of Uvs Lake drainage basin is 70,000 km². The greater part of it lies in Mongolia (Khövsgöl, Zavkhan and Uvs Provinces), and the northern part in Russia (Tuva).

Ubsunur Hollow's importance lies chiefly in its cultural heritage and it is the most important place in Central Asia for its concentration of unstudied archeological artifacts, especially its burial mounds, rock carvings, and stone sculptures, which are remnants of medieval settlements and Buddhist temples. There are as many as 20,000 burial mounds, many of them being older than the Egyptian pyramids.