Geography of Mongolia

At 1,564,116 km² Mongolia is the world's nineteenth-largest country.

The geography of Mongolia is varied with the Gobi desert to the south and with cold and mountainous regions to the north and west. Mongolia consists of relatively flat steppes. The highest point in Mongolia is the Khüiten Peak in the Tavan bogd massif in the far west at 4,374 m. The basin of the lake Uvs Nuur, shared with Tuva Republic in Russia, is a natural World Heritage Site.

Most of the country is hot in the summer and very cold in the winter, with January averages going as low as -30°C (-22°F). Moreover, the country is subject to occasional harsh climatic conditions known as zud. Ulan Bator has the coldest average temperature of any national capital in the world. Mongolia has an extreme continental climate with long, cold winters and short summers, during which most of its annual precipitation falls. The extreme south is the Gobi, some regions of which receive no precipitation at all in most years.

The name "Gobi" is a Mongol term for a desert steppe, 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.

Source: Wikipedia

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