Dangit, Jim, I'm an Artist, Not a Geographer

[HereBeLions]

Thanks Shcyzm! I figured it would be dry, but didn't quite extrapolate that to sunny as well. There would be plenty of fresh water coming up from the mountains, though, and the area's probably volcanic, so would the combination of plenty of rivers and fertile soil be able to sustain agriculture, even with very little rainfall?

[Schyzm]

Thanks Shcyzm! I figured it would be dry, but didn't quite extrapolate that to sunny as well. There would be plenty of fresh water coming up from the mountains, though, and the area's probably volcanic, so would the combination of plenty of rivers and fertile soil be able to sustain agriculture, even with very little rainfall?

so, you know the old adage about water flowing down hill? if all the water is falling on the outside of the ring, the rivers (which are made due to rain fall) wouldn't be particularly large.. and wouldn't provide much. Also, since it's completely surrounded, the water doesn't have many places to go - so you might get a lake or bog in the middle - without serious outflow or rainfall though, it'd be a rather nasty, salty kind of place. Fraught with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions (those crushing tectonic plates do the trick).

given the scale, you might get some limited water cycle going on northeastern inner side of the ring of mountains - maybe enough to support some agriculture. but not a lot. to give you an idea of the kind problems that arise when dealing with high mountains and precipitation, check out this wikipedia article on eastern washington state. Now imagine that no where in your great basin of mountains does it rain more than 7 inches per year....

In any case, what I'm getting at is that areas completely surrounded by mountains are extremely arid.