Land & Resources

Mongolia is bounded on the north by Russia and on the east, south, and west by China. The country has a total area of 1,566,500 sq km (604,830 sq mi), or about three times the size of France.

Most of the country is a high plateau ranging from 900 to 1,500 m (3,000 to 5,000 ft) in elevation. Rocky desert and grassy semiarid steppe cover most of the land. Forests, which are limited to the mountainous areas, cover about 7 percent of the land.

The mountainous northern and western areas are seismically active zones, with frequent strong earthquakes and many hot springs.

The country’s highest peak, Tavan Bogd Uul (4,373 m/14,347 ft), rises in the west where the borders of Mongolia, Russia, and China meet. It is one of many permanently snow-capped peaks in the Altai Mountains, which extend across western Mongolia in two spurs, the Mongolian Altai and the Gobi Altai.

In the southwest, the Gobi Altai taper off into the Gobi desert, which occupies the southern third of the country. The Gobi forms the coldest and farthest north of the world’s deserts. Ancient fossils show that it was once part of a large inland sea basin. The Gobi’s northern half lies in Mongolia, while its southern half lies in China. The desert includes rocky low-lying mountains, basalt-column formations, rolling sand dunes, and barren flat expanses.

Central and northern Mongolia is a land of forested mountains and fertile river valleys. Dominating the central area are the Hangayn (Khangai) Mountains, with peaks rising to more than 3,700 m (more than 12,000 ft).

To the northeast are the Hentiyn (Khentei) Mountains, with peaks generally between 1,850 and 2,400 m (between 6,000 and 8,000 ft). These ranges are geologically older and more eroded than the higher Altai ranges. They surround the fertile agricultural area of the Selenge River basin, the cradle of Mongol civilization.

Ulaanbaatar, the capital, lies on the Tuul River at the southwestern foot of the Hentiyn Mountains.

Eastern Mongolia is a high plateau with steppes extending to the frontier with China, where the plateau meets the enormous faulted scarps of the Greater Khingan Range.

The Dachard Depression in North Mongolia	The Orkhon valley in Arkhangai Aimag
Mountain Steppe Region of central Mongolia	The Gobi-Altai, South West Mongolia

Rivers and Lakes click here

Forest to Steppe

The taiga forest zone is located in northern Mongolia, covering about 5 percent of the country. Here, the southern edge of Siberia’s vast taiga forest—the world’s largest continuous forest system—extends into Mongolia. The Siberian larch is the most widespread tree in the taiga forest, but many other species also grow here, including cedar, pine, spruce, and white birch. These dense, damp forests are home to mammals such as reindeer, moose, brown bear, wolf, lynx, and sable.

The mountain forest-steppe zone covers about 25 percent of the land area, including lower mountain elevations and the north-central Selenge-Orhon river basin. Here, the taiga meets the steppe: The cooler, wetter northern mountain slopes contain taiga species, while the warmer, drier southern slopes contain steppe species. This transition zone has the greatest diversity of plant and animal life. It is also the most populated and developed area of the country.

The steppe zone is a swath of rolling grasslands covering more than 20 percent of the country’s land area, including most of its eastern portion. Mongolia’s steppe is part of a vast plain that stretches from Eastern Europe, across Central Asia, and to the Manchurian Plain in northeastern China. In central Mongolia, the steppe provides important grazing lands for domesticated livestock. The drier southeastern steppe is largely uninhabited and is one of the world’s largest remaining examples of an undisturbed steppe ecosystem. Teeming with wildlife, it is home to hundreds of thousands of gazelles and a diverse array of migratory birds, including golden eagles and white-naped cranes.

Steppe to Desert

The desert steppe zone is located in the great lake basin east of the Altay Mountains and in the eastern part of the Gobi. Extending between steppe and desert, it is a transitional zone of semidesert that covers about 20 percent of the country. Although not part of the Gobi desert proper, Mongolians call this land gobi, which in the Mongol language generally refers to an area of arid rangeland. Some Mongolian herders graze livestock in this zone. Its low grasses and shrubs also provide grazing land for an impressive variety of wild mammals. These include Mongolia’s wild horses, called takhi or Przewalski’s horse, famous for their role in the empire-building conquests of Genghis Khan. By the 1960s decades of hunting and livestock overgrazing had rendered the wild horses extinct in Mongolia, but they were reintroduced in the early 1990s and are now protected in the Khustain Nuruu Nature Reserve, established in 1993. The protected steppe environment of the reserve also supports populations of other endangered species, including the wild ass and saiga antelope.

These animals also inhabit Mongolia’s southern desert zone, in the Gobi. Other endangered animals in this zone include Gobi bears, wild camels, gazelles, and argali sheep. These mammals feed on the Gobi’s sparse growth of grass and scrub and find water in the desert’s tree-fringed oases. The Gobi is also home to many reptile species (including geckos, racerunners, and Tatar sand boas) and hundreds of bird species (including vultures, houbara bustards, desert finches, and desert warblers). Fossilized dinosaur eggs and skeletons have been uncovered in the Gobi. The Gurvansaikhan Nature Reserve and other reserves protect large areas of the Gobi in Mongolia.