National Atlas of Mongolia and Renewal

Summary

On the 60th anniversary of the Department of Cartography at the Institute of Geography and Geoecology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, this article reviews the three editions of the Mongolian National Atlas. It compares the 1990, 2009, and 2022 editions in terms of size, number of maps, contributors, production time, data sources, cartographic methods, and map projections. The 1990 edition, produced by more than 300 Mongolian and Russian scholars over more than ten years, contains 276 maps and is strongly academic. The 2009 edition, completed in one year by about 150 experts from some 40 institutions using GIS, contains 256 maps. The 2022 edition updates statistics to 2020, is published bilingually in Mongolian and English, contains 246 maps, and uses the UTM projection. All editions employ such cartographic techniques as symbols, dot maps, cartograms, cartodiagrams, isolines, flow lines, and area methods, and cover physical geography, history, population, and economy. As comprehensive national cartographic products, the atlases reflect changing natural and socioeconomic conditions and remain important reference works for research and policy.