Journal Article

National atlas of Mongolia and revision

Монгол Улсын Үндэсний Атлас Ба Шинэчлэл

By Ц. Наранцацрал; Б. Сайнбуян; М. Уртнасан; Р. Болдбаяр· 2022

Publication: Монгол Орны Газарзүй-Геоэкологи Сэтгүүл
Issue: 43
Pages: 260-266

Mongolia

2009

In their comparative account of Mongolia’s national atlases, the compilers describe the 2009 National Atlas as a revision commissioned by President N. Enkhbayar’s 2008 decree, with map production concentrated at the Institute of Geography’s GIS–Cartography Laboratory. They attribute its completion in one year to GIS technology, available digital data, and the materials and experience of the first atlas. Published in Mongolian in Seoul, it has 248 pages and 256 maps in a 380 × 285 mm format. An introductory section precedes four main chapters covering ancient and modern Mongolian territory, natural conditions and resources, population and society, and the economy. Sources include maps from earlier atlases, statistics for 2007 and other years, and material from government and research institutions. The account records use of the Gauss–Krüger projection (Pulkovo 1942) and digital elevation models as backgrounds for some maps.

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Marking the Institute of Geography and Geoecology’s 60th anniversary, the authors review the 1990 National Atlas of the Mongolian People’s Republic and its 2009 and 2022 revisions, published as the National Atlas of Mongolia. Commissioned in 1973, the first atlas’s manuscript was completed in 1985 after more than a decade of work by over 300 Mongolian and Russian researchers. It combined expedition findings with specially collected socioeconomic data and manually prepared maps, and appeared in separate Mongolian and Russian publications in 1990. The 2009 Mongolian-language revision took one year, drawing on earlier materials, accumulated experience, GIS and statistical data, principally from 2007. The bilingual Mongolian–English 2022 revision used the 2009 database, statistics updated to 2020 and new research; work begun in 2019 was delayed by COVID-19. The article compares dimensions, contributors, production periods, languages, scales, thematic organization, sources and mapping techniques. Map totals fell from 276 to 256 and 246, while the authors judge thematic coverage largely stable. Both later editions use DEM backgrounds for some maps; the 1990 and 2009 maps use Gauss–Krüger (Pulkovo 1942), whereas the 2022 edition uses UTM under a government decision. The authors emphasize the continuing use of established thematic mapping methods and identify the 1990 atlas’s explanations of sources, phenomena, methods and practical uses as a particular strength.