The landscape is essentially a plain broken only by low eminences such as the Hohburg Hills and dissected by the valleys of the Saale, White Elster, Mulde, and Pleiße rivers.
As a result of the creation of bogs and variable flooding, organic material was also deposited in this basin, which in turn was overlaid by sediments.
A cardioid ring motorway runs around the Leipzig-Halle conurbation, the so-called Central German Loop (Mitteldeutsche Schleife).
Railway lines and Bundesstraßen (federal roads) run in all directions of the compass, linking the Leipzig Bay with other parts of the country.
Only inland shipping has no direct access to this region, although work on the unfinished Elster-Saale Canal began in the mid 20th century.