Mazandaran province is one of the 31 provinces of Iran, located along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea and in the adjacent Central Alborz mountain range, in central-northern part of the country. The province, founded in 1937, covers an area of 23,842 km2.
Image: Mount Damavand in sunrise view from Tochal summit, Iran 2017
Image: Ali Azad
Image: DSCN1243
Image: عباس اباد (5)
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake and sometimes referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia, south of the fertile plains of Southern Russia in Eastern Europe, and north of the mountainous Iranian Plateau. It covers a surface area of 371,000 km2 (143,000 sq mi), an area approximately equal to that of Japan, with a volume of 78,200 km3 (19,000 cu mi). It has a salinity of approximately 1.2%, about a third of the salinity of average seawater. It is bounded by Kazakhstan to the northeast, Russia to the northwest, Azerbaijan to the southwest, Iran to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southeast.
The Caspian Sea taken from the International Space Station, seen from the south
Separation of the Paratethys Sea from open seas formed a megalake, the basis of the Caspian Sea and other bodies of water in vicinity, resulting in confinements of oceanic faunas such as cetaceans and pinnipeds.
Caspian Sea near Aktau, Mangystau Region, Kazakhstan
Iran's northern Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forests are maintained by moisture captured from the Caspian Sea by the Alborz Mountain Range.
