Research project NG| Pastoralists adapting to ecological and socio-economic change in the Dzungarian Gobi, Mongolia
In our project we focus on the biological and cultural diversity in the Dzungarian Gobi desert in Mongolia.
Our study site is the Great Gobi “B” Strictly Protected Area, where nomadic pastoralists have herds of goats, sheep, cows, horses, camels and yaks. Those nomads share the natural resources with the reintroduced Przewalski’s horse, previously extinct in the wild, and other wild ungulates.
Our research investigates shared pasture resources between livestock and wildlife, the movement patterns of pastoralists over a vast land area and the traditional nomadic herding management influenced by changes and challenges of our modern times. Our socio-ecological research approach ranges from field observations, GPS collar data, laboratory experiments to collecting interview data and mapping all information in GIS.
Project description
Worldwide, pastoralism is the most common land use form practiced on extensive rangelands unsuitable for high-yielding agricultural production. These rangelands cover about 50% of our global land. For nomadic pastoralists, mobility is a key strategy since centuries to minimize grazing pressure on rangelands while providing nutritious forage resources to their livestock on pastures with high spatial-temporal resource variability.
Herder mobility is becoming even more important in times of climate change and erratic rainfall regimes. However, the movement possibilities for livestock has drastically declined in recent years due to changing socio-economic conditions, growing livestock numbers and climate change threating both ecological and socio-economic resilience of pastures and herding communities.
Our project dives deep into analysing the impact of livestock grazing on plants, soil and other co-habiting wild animals in the protected Gobi B, Mongolia. Using remote sensing, GIS, interviews with pastoralists and field assessments of plants and soil provides us with an insight whether and how mobility is still possible for the pastoralists in this area. We gain in-depth spatio-temporal information on land use by livestock through large data sets of GPS collars in collaboration with the pastoralists and the park management.
More about this project
Members
Internal: Anna Treydte
External: Lena Michler
External: Petra Kaczensky
Collaboration with:
International Takhi Group (www.savethewildhorse.org)