National atlas of the Mongolian People's Republic (issues and scientific content)

Ya. G. Mashbits reviews the 1989 collective monograph National Atlas of the Mongolian People’s Republic: Problems and Scientific Content, edited by V. V. Vorobyev and prepared by the Institute of Geography of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences with Soviet and Mongolian collaborators. The monograph examines the concept and programme of the National Atlas of the Mongolian People’s Republic, whose development began in 1976 and whose publication, the reviewer reports, was being completed in 1990. More than 300 Soviet and Mongolian specialists participated in preparing the atlas, which incorporated results from long-term joint expeditions. The review highlights the monograph’s thematic breadth and coherent design, its treatment of atlas structure, scales and layout, and its explanations of methods for mapping processes and their spatial forms. Four chapters cover geology, relief, climate, water, biological resources, landscapes and natural regionalization; four others address population, settlement, the economy’s territorial structure, social infrastructure, sectoral functioning and economic links. Mashbits particularly values the combination of component mapping with landscape maps, sectoral and integrated regionalization, and a general economic map. He praises the monograph’s synthesis of knowledge about Mongolia and considers its approach scientifically productive and practically applicable.