Uzbekistan, officially Republic of Uzbekistan, Uzbek Ŭzbekiston or Ŭzbekistan Respublikasi

Plant and animal life
Vegetation patterns in Uzbekistan vary largely according to altitude. The lowlands in the west have a thin natural cover of desert sedge and grass. The high foothills in the east support grass, and forests and brushwood appear on the hills. Forests cover less than 8 percent of Uzbekistan’s area. Animal life in the deserts and plains includes rodents, foxes, wolves, and occasional gazelles and antelopes. Boars, roe deer, bears, wolves, Siberian goats, and some lynx live in the high mountains.
People of Uzbekistan
Ethnic groups

Uzbekistan: Ethnic composition

Bukhara, Uzbekistan: Kalyan Mosque
Uzbeks make up more than four-fifths of the population, followed by Tajiks, Kazakhs, Tatars, Russians, and Karakalpaks. Uzbeks are the least Russified of the Turkic peoples formerly under Soviet rule, and virtually all of them still claim Uzbek as their primary language.
Languages
The Uzbeks speak a language belonging to the southeastern, or Chagatai (Turki), branch of the Turkic language group. Karakalpak, a distantly related Turkic language, enjoys official status alongside Uzbek in Karakalpakstan, where it is spoken by about half a million people. About one-seventh of the population of Uzbekistan speaks Russian.
Religion

Uzbekistan: Religious affiliation
The Uzbeks are Sunni Muslims, and they are considered to be among the most devout Muslims in all of Central Asia. Thus, about three-fourths of the population is Muslim. Slightly less than one-tenth of the population is Eastern Orthodox Christian, and the remainder of the people consider themselves nonreligious or follow other religions.
Settlement patterns
Most of the population lives in the eastern half of the country. Heavily populated oases and foothill basins are covered with an extensive network of canals intersecting fields, orchards, and vineyards. The fertile Fergana Valley in the extreme east, the most populous area in Central Asia, supports both old and new cities and towns and traditional rural settlements. Much of Karkalpakstan, in the west, is under threat of depopulation caused by the environmental poisoning of the Aral Sea area.

Uzbekistan: Urban-rural
Roughly half of the population of Uzbekistan lives in urban areas; the urban population has a disproportionately high number of non-Uzbeks. Slavic peoples—Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians—held a large proportion of administrative positions. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, many Russians and smaller numbers of Jews emigrated from Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states, changing the ethnic balance and employment patterns in the region.
The cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tashkent have histories that extend back to ancient times. Andijon (Andizhan), Khiva, and Qŭqon (Kokand) also have served the region as cultural, political, and trade centres for centuries. Soviet-era architects purposely laid out some newer towns, including Chirchiq, Angren, Bekobod, and Nawoiy (Navoi), close to rich mineral and energy resources. Soviet planners also sited Yangiyul, Guliston, and Yangiyer in areas that produce and process cotton and fruit.