[quote=Vilageidiotx]
Those lakes would be fresh water since they are attached to a river system that feeds the ocean. That means that the area he has marked off won't look like the Gobi. It would be more like the area where the deep midwest meets the Great plains. More Iowa than Mongolia.
[/quote]

True. Though I still wouldn't imagine it to be nearly as good a place as the Eastern and Western deltas. The Don, Volga, or Ural basins weren't exactly a crater of great sedentary civilization either.