Getting started with mongolmaps

In mongolmaps: Maps and Administrative Boundaries of Mongolia and Ulaanbaatar

knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>",
  fig.width = 7,
  fig.height = 4.2,
  # Sharp figures on the website; small ones in the CRAN package.
  dpi = if (identical(Sys.getenv("IN_PKGDOWN"), "true")) 200 else 96,
  eval = rlang::is_installed("ggplot2")
)

mongolmaps gives you ready-made maps of Mongolia. Everything in this vignette works offline: simplified boundaries ship with the package.

library(mongolmaps)

Administrative levels

Mongolia has 21 aimags (provinces) and the capital, Ulaanbaatar. Aimags are divided into soums, and soums into bags. Ulaanbaatar is divided into 9 districts (duureg) and those into khoroos.

| Level in mongolmaps | Rural units | Ulaanbaatar units | |---|---|---| | "country" | Mongolia | | | "region" | 4 economic regions | Ulaanbaatar is the 5th | | "aimag" | 21 aimags | Ulaanbaatar | | "soum" | 330 soums | 9 districts | | "bag" | ~1,650 bags | 204 khoroos |

Each level has a function:

mn_aimags()

All of them return the same columns:

• pcode: a code that identifies the unit at any level;
• name, name_en, name_mn, name_mns: the name in the chosen language, in English (as NSO writes it), in Cyrillic, and in Latin with diacritics;
• level, type, number: what kind of unit it is;
• iso_code, nso_code: ISO 3166-2 and NSO statistical codes;
• parent_pcode, region_pcode, aimag_pcode, soum_pcode: the units it sits in;
• area_km2 and the geometry.

Filtering

Pass the places you want. Names can be spelled any common way.

mn_soums(aimag = "Khovd")
mn_aimags(region = "Western")

Drawing maps

mn_map() draws any of these with ggplot2.

mn_map(mn_soums(aimag = c("Khovd", "Uvs", "Bayan-Ulgii")), fill = aimag_pcode, label = TRUE)

It returns a normal ggplot, so you can keep adding to it:

library(ggplot2)
mn_map(mn_aimags()) +
  geom_sf(data = mn_settlements(type = c("capital", "aimag_centre")), colour = "firebrick") +
  labs(title = "Aimag centres")

With context = TRUE you get neighbouring countries, rivers and lakes:

mn_map(mn_regions(), fill = name, context = TRUE)

Projections

Boundaries come in longitude and latitude (EPSG:4326). mn_map() projects them for you; to project them yourself use crs:

mn_aimags(crs = "albers")

mn_crs() returns the projections: Albers equal-area for national maps, UTM zone 48N for Ulaanbaatar.

Languages

mn_map(mn_aimags(lang = "mn"), label = TRUE, lang = "mn")

Set options(mongolmaps.lang = "mn") to use Mongolian everywhere.

Higher resolution

The bundled boundaries are simplified. For detailed work, use resolution = "high": the full-resolution boundaries (about 10 MB) are downloaded once and cached.

mn_soums(aimag = "Khovd", resolution = "high")

Where the data come from

mn_sources()[c("id", "provider", "license")]

Please credit the providers; mn_citation() gives the text.

mongolmaps documentation built on Oct. 10, 2026, 5:08 p.m.