In my opinion, southern Ural is very fine for dwarves. It is very old mountains with plenty of resourses.
The main reasons is this:
1) very big ore deposit in the east - mountain Magnitnaya (which called such cause the errors of compasses due very big value of magnetite);
2) few clear flux mountains to the west - shikhans in bashkort language - few sedimentary alone standing mountains in Bashkortostan;
3) there are some bitumious coal on plains to the west;
4) a lot of wood to the north and on mountains;
5) there are mountain YanganTau (Burning Mountain from bashkort lang) which possibly have very shallow magma, anyway, there are must be source of infinite smoke emission for thousands years;
6) hills to the south with very rich soil;
7) in fact, there is the most valuable honey production in Russia and maybe in whole world;
8 ) there are a lot of gems, especially jaspers;
9) climate is not very cold as nothern Ural: in my lifetime it was 3-4 times when temperature was below -35 degrees in Celsius grade. Most of the winter it around -10 - -25 degrees. However, summer is hot - around +38 from June to August.
10) there are a lot of rivers, which connected to Caspian sea and Volga river - historically, traders used them to move goods to the Scandinavia, Byzantium empire and Iran, so human merchants have access to the mountainhomes.
Also, this region:
Sorry for my bad English.