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Location: Northern Asia, between China and Russia
Geographic coordinates: 46 00 N, 105 00 E
Map references: Asia
Area:
total: 1.565 million sq km
land: 1.565 million sq km
water: 0 sq km
Area - comparative: slightly smaller than Alaska
Land boundaries:
total: 8,114 km
border countries: China 4,673 km, Russia 3,441 km
Coastline: 0 km (landlocked)
Maritime claims: none (landlocked)
Climate: desert; continental (large daily and seasonal temperature
ranges)
Terrain: vast semidesert and desert plains; mountains in
west and southwest; Gobi Desert in southeast
Elevation extremes:
lowest point: Hoh Nuur 518 m
highest point: Tavan Bogd Uul 4,374 m
Natural resources: oil, coal, copper, molybdenum, tungsten,
phosphates, tin, nickel, zinc, wolfram, fluorspar, gold
Land use:
arable land: 1%
permanent crops: 0%
permanent pastures: 80%
forests and woodland: 9%
other: 10% (1993 est.)
Irrigated land: 800 sq km (1993 est.)
Natural hazards: dust storms can occur in the spring; grassland
fires
Environment - current issues: limited natural fresh water
resources; policies of the former communist regime promoting rapid
urbanization and industrial growth have raised concerns about their
negative effects on the environment; the burning of soft coal in
power plants and the lack of enforcement of environmental laws have
severely polluted the air in Ulaanbaatar; deforestation, overgrazing,
the converting of virgin land to agricultural production have increased
soil erosion from wind and rain; desertification and mining activities
have also had a deleterious effect on the environment
Environment - international agreements:
party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto
Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification,
Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer
Protection, Wetlands
signed, but not ratified: none of the selected agreements
Geography - note: landlocked; strategic location between
China and Russia
Geography
Mongolia is situated, Central Asian nation bounded by Russia and
China. It has a total area of 1,566,500 sq. km (604,830-sq. mi).
The capital and largest city is Ulaanbaatar.
Mongolia is an arid plateau region with mountains in the north and
the Gobi dominates west, its center and southeast.
Temperatures are very cold in winter and warm to hot in summer.
Annual rainfall seldom exceeds 380 mm (15 in) in the mountains and
125 mm (5 in) in the desert. Mongolia's primary resources are its
stock-raising prairies, its fur trade, and its mostly unexploited
minerals.
Climate
Mongolia's climate is harsh, with temperatures ranging in winter
from a high of -21° C (-5° F) to a low of -30° C (-22° F) and in
summer between 10° and 27° C (50° and 80° F).
Winters are dry, and summer rainfall seldom exceeds 380 mm (15 in)
in the mountains and 125 mm (5 in) in the desert.
Mongolia is a country that lies between China and Russia in east-central
Asia. Mongolia is a rugged land. Plateaus and towering mountain
ranges cover much of the country.
The bleak Gobi Desert
blankets much of southeastern Mongolia. Temperatures are usually
very cold or very hot. Mongolia's little rainfall occurs in a few
summer storms.
Long a province of China, Mongolia won its independence in 1921
with Soviet backing. A communist regime was installed in 1924.
During the early 1990s, the ex-communist Mongolian People's Revolutionary
Party (MPRP) gradually yielded its monopoly on power. In 1996, the
Democratic Union Coalition (DUC) defeated the MPRP in a national
election and has attempted to establish a number of reforms to modernize
the economy.
However, many former communists retain key posts and implementation
has been difficult.
Mongolia
GEOGRAPHY
Size: Total 1,565,000 square kilometers.
Topography: Mountains and rolling plateaus; vast
semidesert and desert plains, 90 percent pasture or desert wasteland,
less than 1 percent arable, 8 to 10 percent forested; mountains
in north, west and southwest; Gobi, a vast desert in southeast;
Selenge river system in north.
Climate: Desert; high, cold, dry, continental
climate; sharp seasonal fluctuations and variation; little precipitation;
great diurnal temperature changes.
SOCIETY
Population: 2,125,463 in July 1989; in 1989, birth
rate 35.1 per 1,000; death rate 7.6 per 1,000. Approximately 51
percent live in urban areas; nearly 25 percent in Ulaanbaatar in
1986. In 1987 population density per square kilometer 1.36; sex
ratio 50.1 percent male, 49.9 percent female as of 1986.
Ethnic Groups: Nearly 90 percent Mongol. Rest
Kazakh (5.3 percent), Chinese (2 percent), Russian (2 percent);
Tuvins (see Glossary),
Uzbeks (see Glossary),
Uighurs (see
Glossary), and others (1.5 percent).
Languages: Khalkha Mongol (official language),
90 percent; minor languages include Turkic, Chinese, Russian, and
Kazakh.
Religion: Predominantly Yellow Sect of Tibetan
Buddhism (Lamaism); about 4 percent Muslim (primarily in southwest),
some shamanism. Limited religious activity although freedom of religion
guaranteed in 1960 Constitution.
Health: Life expectancy in 1989 sixty-three for
males, sixty-seven for females. Infant mortality 49 to 53 per 1,000;
112 hospitals in 1986 with a ratio of 110 hospital beds and 24.8
doctors per 10,000 population. Overall free medical care; medical
specialists and facilities concentrated in urban areas; close cooperation
with Soviet Union in medical research and training.
Education: Four years compulsory elementary school
overall and four years compulsory secondary school in all but most
remote areas; two-year noncompulsory general secondary. Higher education:
one university, seven other institutes of higher learning. In 1985
primary and secondary education: 28 specialized secondary schools,
40 vocational schools, 900 general education schools enrolling 435,900
students; many Mongolian students at universities and technical
schools in the Soviet Union and East European countries--approximately
11,000 studied abroad in 1986-87. In the late 1980s, educational
reform plans announced for 11-year system of general education with
traditional emphasis. In 1985 national literacy rate estimated at
80 percent; 100 percent claimed by government.
Media: Thirty-five newspapers and thirty-eight
magazines published in 1986.
Data as of June 1989
Mongolia
Geography
Landforms
The terrain is one of mountains and rolling plateaus, with a high
degree of relief . Overall, the land slopes from the high Altai
Mountains of the west and the north to plains and depressions in
the east and the south. Hutyen Orgil (sometimes called Nayramadlin
Orgil--Mount Friendship) in extreme western Mongolia, where the
Mongolian, the Soviet, and the Chinese borders meet, is the highest
point (4,374 meters). The lowest is 560 meters, an otherwise undistinguished
spot in the eastern Mongolian plain. The country has an average
elevation of 1,580 meters. The landscape includes one of Asia's
largest freshwater lakes (Hovsgol Nuur), many salt lakes, marshes,
sand dunes, rolling grasslands, alpine forests, and permanent montane
glaciers. Northern and western Mongolia are seismically active zones,
with frequent earthquakes and many hot springs and extinct volcanoes.
Mongolia has three major mountain ranges. The highest is the Altai
Mountains, which stretch across the western and the southwestern
regions of the country on a northwest-to-southeast axis. The Hangayn
Nuruu, mountains also trending northwest to southeast, occupy much
of central and north-central Mongolia. These are older, lower, and
more eroded mountains, with many forests and alpine pastures. The
Hentiyn Nuruu, mountains near the Soviet border to the northeast
of Ulaanbaatar, are lower still. Much of eastern Mongolia is occupied
by a plain, and the lowest area is a southwest-to-northeast trending
depression that reaches from the Gobi region in the south to the
eastern frontier. The rivers drain in three directions: north to
the Arctic Ocean, east to the Pacific, or south to the deserts and
the depressions of Inner Asia. Rivers are most extensively developed
in the north, and the country's major river system is that of the
Selenge-Moron, which drains into Lake Baykal. Some minor tributaries
of Siberia's Yenisey River also rise in the mountains of northwestern
Mongolia. Rivers in northeastern Mongolia drain into the Pacific
through the Argun and Amur (Heilong Jiang) rivers, while the few
streams of southern and southwestern Mongolia do not reach the sea
but run into salt lakes or deserts.
Data as of June 1989
Mongolia
Climate
Mongolia is high, cold, and dry. It has an extreme continental
climate with long, cold winters and short summers, during which
most precipitation falls. The country averages 257 cloudless days
a year, and it is usually at the center of a region of high atmospheric
pressure. Precipitation is highest in the north, which averages
20 to 35 centimeters per year, and lowest in the south, which receives
10 to 20 centimeters . The extreme south is the Gobi, some regions
of which receive no precipitation at all in most years. The name
Gobi is a Mongol meaning desert, depression, salt marsh, or steppe,
but which usually refers to a category of arid rangeland with insufficient
vegetation to support marmots but with enough to support camels.
Mongols distinguish gobi from desert proper, although the
distinction is not always apparent to outsiders unfamiliar with
the Mongolian landscape. Gobi rangelands are fragile and
are easily destroyed by overgrazing, which results in expansion
of the true desert, a stony waste where not even Bactrian camels
can survive.
Average temperatures over most of the country are below freezing
from November through March and are about freezing in April and
October. January and February averages of -20° C are common,
with winter nights of -40° C occurring most years. Summer extremes
reach as high as 38° C in the southern Gobi region and 33°
C in Ulaanbaatar. More than half the country is covered by permafrost,
which makes construction, road building, and mining difficult. All
rivers and freshwater lakes freeze over in the winter, and smaller
streams commonly freeze to the bottom. Ulaanbaatar lies at 1,351
meters above sea level in the valley of the Tuul Gol, a river. Located
in the relatively well-watered north, it receives an annual average
of 31 centimeters of precipitation, almost all of which falls in
July and in August. Ulaanbaatar has an average annual temperature
of -2.9°C and a frost-free period extending on the average from
mid-June to late August.
Mongolia's weather is characterized by extreme variability and
short-term unpredictability in the summer, and the multiyear averages
conceal wide variations in precipitation, dates of frosts, and occurrences
of blizzards and spring dust storms. Such weather poses severe challenges
to human and livestock survival. Official statistics list less than
1 percent of the country as arable, 8 to 10 percent as forest, and
the rest as pasture or desert. Grain, mostly wheat, is grown in
the valleys of the Selenge river system in the north, but yields
fluctuate widely and unpredictably as a result of the amount and
the timing of rain and the dates of killing frosts. Although winters
are generally cold and clear, there are occasional blizzards that
do not deposit much snow but cover the grasses with enough snow
and ice to make grazing impossible, killing off tens of thousands
of sheep or cattle. Such losses of livestock, which are an inevitable
and, in a sense, normal consequence of the climate, have made it
difficult for planned increases in livestock numbers to be achieved
.
Data as of June 1989
Mongolia
Environmental Concerns
After many years of uncritical fostering of industrial and urban
growth, Mongolia's authorities became aware in the late 1980s of
the environmental costs of such policies. Belated Soviet concern
over the pollution of Lake Baykal encouraged Mongolian actions to
preserve their counterpart Hovsgol Nuur, which is linked to Lake
Baykal through the Selenge Moron. A wool-scouring plant that had
been discharging wastes into Hovsgol Nuur was closed; truck traffic
on the winter ice was banned; and the shipping of oil in barges
on the lake was stopped. Deforestation in the Hangayn Nuruu, had
reduced the flow of northern Mongolia's rivers, which were polluted
by runoff from the fertilized and pesticide-treated grain fields
along their banks, by industrial wastes, and by untreated sewage
from growing settlements. Ulaanbaatar--located in a valley--with
factories and 500,000 inhabitants who depend on soft coal, had severe
air pollution, especially when the air was still and cold in winter.
Deforestation, overgrazing of pastures, and efforts to increase
grain and hay production by plowing up more virgin land had resulted
in increased soil erosion, both from wind and from heavy downpours
of the severe thunderstorms that bring much of Mongolia's rain.
In the south, the desert area of the Gobi was expanding, threatening
the fragile gobi pasturelands. The government responded
by founding the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 1987 and
by giving increased publicity to environmental issues.
Data as of June 1989
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