Aims The Mongolian steppes, the world's largest intact grassland, have long supported nomadic pastoralism. Yet in recent decades, increasing livestock grazing and reduced herder mobility have driven pasture degradation, but its extent differs between major climate regimes and levels of human disturbance. The relative importance of abiotic factors versus land use impacts on plant diversity and palatability remains debated. Specifically, few studies have addressed the impact of herder mobility on vegetation patterns. We thus coupled vegetation and quantitative social survey data to examine how abiotic drivers, disturbance and herder household mobility relate to vegetation integrity.Location Eastern Mongolian steppe.Methods We conducted vegetation and herder household surveys at 11 study sites in the Eastern Mongolian steppe (275 vegetation plots and 249 herder households). These sites are classified into two groups with high and low human disturbance levels in terms of herder and livestock density, respectively. We (1) employed multivariate variation partitioning to investigate the relative importance of predictor groups macroclimate, soil chemistry, human disturbance and herder household mobility on plant species composition; (2) subsequently fitted generalized linear mixed models for evaluating effects of precipitation, grazing and herder household mobility on plant richness, vegetation cover and representation of palatable species. Moreover, we conducted indicator species analysis to identify plants indicating higher disturbance level.Results In terms of species composition, macroclimate played the most important role, followed by human disturbance and mobility, then soil chemistry. Importantly, mobility and its overlapping effect with macroclimate explained the most variance of plant community for sites with higher disturbance levels, while soil chemistry was more important at sites with lower disturbance levels. Between-season moving frequency was positively related to richness, diversity and the richness of palatable species. Locally intensified grazing reduced the share of palatable species cover. Overall, the negative impact of intensified grazing on total vegetation cover and the cover of palatable species was only pronounced at drier sites. Additionally, five common plant species were identified as reliable indicators of varying disturbance levels.Conclusions Our findings highlight the important role of herder household mobility in shaping plant species composition, in addition to climate, soil and human disturbance. Higher seasonal mobility promotes richness and diversity of vascular plants and richness of palatable species. Disturbance impact on vegetation cover at relatively drier steppes supports concern about pasture degradation at the transition zone between dry typical steppes and desert steppes. The representation of palatable species should be considered for assessing pasture quality.