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This new
province was created as a result of the division of
Mazandaran province into two smaller administrative units.
It borders on Tukmanistan Republic to the north, Khorasan
province to the east, Semnan province to the south, the
Caspian Sea and the Guilan province to the west. Its
climate varies greatly under the influence of a number of
geographical factors such as the altitude, latitude, trend
of Alborz mountains, distance from the sea, Turkman Sabra
(Turkman Desert), Siberian plain to the north of Russia,
local and regional winds, displacement of northern and
western air masses, as well as the dense forests. It
receives maximum amount of precipitation during autumn and
the least in summer months. Part of the province is
occupied by inhospitable steppe and marshland. The Turkman
Desert occupies the strip south of the Atrak River, which
forms ~a part of the border with Turkmanistan Republic. In
the northeast. the forest is less dense and the peaks are
lower than further west. The more fertile Dasht-e Gorgan (Gorgan
plain), between the Desert and the mountains, formed,
until recently, the boundary between the settled and
nomadic populations. The population is largely Turkman,
and the threat posed to the settled communities by this
previously wild and nomadic tribe only receded at the end
of the last century. Like Mazandaran, Golestan province
and its surrounding areas were settled much earlier than
Guilan, and the Gorgan plain in particular is believed to
contain some of the most important archeological sites
(older than 6000 years) in west Asia.
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