Talk:Northern Mongolia

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Discussion for: Northern Mongolia • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Northern Mongolia is a Growing Region: a named region that sits above Growing Areas and below the regional complex and gene pool. It covers the Mongolian provinces on the Selenga, the Orkhon and the Tuul, with Ulaanbaatar, and stops at the frontier with Russia. The Russian side of the Selenga belongs to Transbaikal; the eastern provinces of Mongolia (Dornod, Sükhbaatar, Khentii) are outside the region.

Data verification

Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the boundary, the units the region takes in, and the accessions and news items that belong to it here.

Discussion

Why the region is on the map

• The national programme against drugs of 2000 says that wild hemp grows fairly widely in Orkhon, Selenge and Darkhan-Uul (and names three places outside the region: Khalkh Gol in Dornod, Bulgan and Üyench in Khovd).
• Since 2000: the police destroyed wild hemp in Darkhan-Uul, Selenge and Orkhon in 2014, and in Töv, Darkhan-Uul, Selenge, Orkhon, Bulgan and Khövsgöl (with Khentii and Dornod, outside the region) in 2013–2017. Reports of 2014 and 2016 name Selenge, Darkhan-Uul and Töv as places where it grows and is gathered; a police report of 2014 records it picked in Töv. It is a weed of wheat in Töv (2014) and Selenge (2018).
• Herbarium sheets and seed: the Tuul near Songino (1974), the Orkhon south of Bulgan (1980), the Selenga floodplain in Khövsgöl (2007) and Baruunburen in Selenge (seed, 2018).
• No source read describes licensed hemp grown inside the region.

The name

Northern Mongolia describes where the region lies. A cross-border Selenga Basin was considered and not used, because the lower Selenga lies in Buryatia, inside Transbaikal. The name is not a source's own, though Gubanov's label of 1980 begins Северная Монголия and the newspaper report of March 2014 speaks of the country's northern region.

Growing status

The status is Active. Government and police sources from 2000 to 2022 and weed surveys of 2014 and 2018 describe wild hemp growing in the region. No source says that it has stopped growing there. Destruction campaigns are not read as an end to its growth.

How the border is drawn

• The border is a proxy built from whole administrative units, with OpenStreetMap relation numbers: Selenge (270089), Darkhan-Uul (270091), Orkhon (270092), Bulgan (270073) and Töv (3382267) provinces, Ulaanbaatar (270090), and the Ikh-Uul (7305541) and Tarialan (7305535) sums of Khövsgöl.
• Orkhon, Selenge and Darkhan-Uul are named by the programme of 2000, the police in 2014 and the report of 2017; Töv by the reports of 2014 and 2016, the police in 2014 and the report of 2017; Bulgan by the report of 2017 and Gubanov's sheet; Ulaanbaatar by Zhurba's sheet.
• Khövsgöl is named by the report of 2017 without a place. The region takes in only the two sums on the upper Selenga where the 2007 sheet was gathered: its label names Ikh-Uul, and its point falls just inside Tarialan, across the river, on the map used here. The rest of Khövsgöl, the province of the lake, is left out.
• Khentii and Dornod, named in the report of 2017, belong with the eastern provinces, where the evidence is herbarium sheets and observation records; they are not part of this region.
• The Transbaikal shape is subtracted, so the two regions meet on the frontier without overlapping. The union is about 178,000 km², the figure in the infobox. The infobox point (48.56, 105.47) is the centre of the shape.
• Where this border meets the border of a neighbouring place, the two share one line, drawn once.
• The border is not drawn from accession or news points.

Accessions

• Zhurba 1855 (the Tuul near Songino, 1974), Gubanov 3857 (the Orkhon south of Bulgan, 1980), Kamelin 437 (the Selenga floodplain, 2007) and IBB-MNG-SEL-0920180001 (seed from Baruunburen, 2018), all classed as feral, are attached to the region.
• Pawlow 618 (1924) has no located place on the wiki. The catalogue point given for it falls inside the region, but its label's place names have not been read with certainty, so it is not attached.

Where the sources disagree

• Official national figures differ: about 10,000 hectares (a study cited in 2014), about 15,000 hectares in more than 40 sums of 14 provinces (2016), destruction on 1,800 hectares in 11 provinces (2018) and on 1,924.36 hectares in 11 provinces and the capital (2022). None of them is broken down by province, and the page does not use them for the region.
• The 2000 programme's "Bulgan" is a sum of Khovd province, not Bulgan province.
• The 1,497.8 hectares of 2013–2017 are counted with repeats and cover eight provinces, two of them outside the region.

Sources

• Law and government: the national programme against drugs (annex 1 to Government Resolution No. 34 of 2000), read on legalinfo.mn.
• Police and press: iKon.mn (11 March 2014, from Ödriin shuudan; 25 July 2014, from Zuuny medee); 24tsag.mn (12 March 2014); police.gov.mn (8 October 2014); the research report of 2016 (sudalgaa.gov.mn); the police criminology report on a survey of 2017; the police report for 2022; Mongolia's statement to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (2019).
• Botany: Azzaya and Otgonsuren (2014, 2018); Baasanmunkh et al. (2022).
• Herbarium sheets and seed: the Moscow Digital Herbarium records of MW0175120 and MW0175108 (with its sheet image); the ALTB Herbarium record of 1100011370; the GBIF record of the Barcelona voucher BC-997794.

Not used

• An undated opinion piece on eagle.mn naming Selenge, Darkhan-Uul, Töv and Orkhon: its date could not be fixed.
• A company statement of 2019 by Hemp Mongolia on a planned production site at Baganuur, with a figure for wild hemp near it; and a report of 2020 that the company was the only one allowed to grow hemp. Neither describes hemp grown inside the region.
• N. I. Vavilov's note (1926) that V. E. Pisarev reported weedy hemp from northern Mongolia: the 1926 text could not be re-read here.
• No source read describes hemp grown or used in northern Mongolia before 1990.