Abstract
Mongolia is subject to regular peaks of livestock winter mortality called dzuds. Several kinds of dzud exist and the ‘white dzud’, characterized by heavy stochastic snowfalls preventing livestock to access forage, is considered the most common. Droughts and high livestock densities are thought to be part of the dzud process by affecting body condition, which increases vulnerability to snowfalls. Guided by the equilibrium/nonequilibrium framework, we studied how rainfall, animal numbers and pasture health (defined as the integrity of ecological processes sustaining grass growth) impact livestock body condition in a case study of West Mongolia. We studied this parameter through livestock productivity (LP) as a proxy, defined as the annual number of newborns per breeding-age female. We found no significant impact of rainfall or livestock numbers, alone or combined. We found through the study of pasture use, defined as the ratio forage consumed/forage available, an impact of the combined effect of rainfall, animal numbers and pasture health. We observed in addition sharp LP decreases prior to dzuds, which suggests that the above-mentioned drivers interact to weaken livestock which increases its vulnerability to winter hazards. This tends to show that in our case study, dzuds are not the simple consequence of stochastic hazards striking randomly, but instead, the final stage of a chain of events that involves dry years, high livestock densities and pasture degradation. This also indicates that dzud early warning indicators could be designed based on LP monitoring.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Coefficient of variation = standard deviation/mean.
Some herders prevent weak females from reproducing, but we considered it did not affect our results precisely because LP was used as a proxy for body condition.
References
Begzsuren S, Ellis JE, Ojima DS et al (2004) Livestock responses to droughts and severe winter weather in the Gobi Three Beauty National Park, Mongolia. J Arid Environ 59:785–796
Desta S, Coppock DL (2002) Cattle population dynamics in the southern Ethiopian rangelands, 1980–97. J Range Manag 55(5):439–451
Ellis J (1995) Climate variability and complex ecosystem dynamics: implications for pastoral development. In: Living with uncertainty. Intermediate Technology Publications Ltd, Ian Scoones
Ellis JE, Swift D (1988) Stability of African pastoral ecosystems: alternate paradigms and implications for development. J Range Manag 41:450–459
Fijn N (2011) Living with herds: human-animal coexistence in Mongolia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Gaillard J-M, Festa-Bianchet M, Yoccoz NG et al (2000) Temporal variation in fitness components and population dynamics of large herbivores. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 31:367–393
Hempson GP, Illius AW, Hendricks HH et al (2015) Herbivore population regulation and resource heterogeneity in a stochastic environment. Ecology 96:2170–2180. doi:10.1890/14-1501.1
Hilbig W (1995) The vegetation of Mongolia. SPB Academic Publishing bv, Amsterdam
Hu HL, Liu YZ, Li YK et al (2014) Use of the n-alkanes to estimate intake, apparent digestibility and diet composition in sheep grazing on Stipa breviflora desert steppe. Journal of Integrative Agriculture 13:1065–1072. doi:10.1016/S2095-3119(13)60502-X
Illius AW, O’connor TG (1999) On the relevance of nonequilibrium concepts to arid and semiarid grazing systems. Ecol Appl 9:798–813
Joly F (2015) Dynamics of a pastoral system of the Mongolian Gobi exposed to climate hazards: a resilience-based case study in a viability framework. Ph.D. Thesis, AgroParisTech
Joly F, Samdanjigmed T, Cottereau V, Feh C (2013) Ecological constraints on and consequences of land use heterogeneity: a case study of the Mongolian Gobi. J Arid Environ 95:84–91. doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2013.03.014
Middleton N, Rueff H, Sternberg T et al (2015) Explaining spatial variations in climate hazard impacts in western Mongolia. Landsc Ecol 30:91–107. doi:10.1007/s10980-014-0091-2
Nandintsetseg B, Shinoda M (2011) Seasonal change of soil moisture in Mongolia: its climatology and modelling. Int J Climatol 31:1143–1152. doi:10.1002/joc.2134
NSOM (2011) Mongolian statistical yearbook 2010. NSOM, Ulaanbaatar
NSOM (2015) Statistical information. http://www.1212.mn/en/contents/stats/contents_stat_fld_tree_html.jsp. Accessed 30 Sep 2015
Parker KL, Barboza PS, Gillingham MP (2009) Nutrition integrates environmental responses of ungulates. Funct Ecol 23:57–69. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2435.2009.01528.x
Retzer V (2007) Forage competition between livestock and Mongolian Pika (Ochotona pallasi) in Southern Mongolian mountain steppes. Basic Appl Ecol. doi:10.1016/j.baae.2006.05.002
Reynolds JF, Smith DMS, Lambin EF et al (2007) Global desertification: building a science for dryland development. Science 316:847–851. doi:10.1126/science.1131634
Scoones I (1995) Living with uncertainty. Intermediate Technology Publications, Ian Scoones
Smart AJ, Derner JD, Hendrickson JR et al (2010) Effects of grazing pressure on efficiency of grazing on North American Great Plains rangelands. Rangel Ecol Manag 63:397–406
Staff B on A, Staff NRC (1994) Rangeland health new methods to classify, inventory, and monitor rangelands. National Academies Press, Washington, DC
Suttie JM, Reynolds SG, Batello C, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (eds) (2005) Grasslands of the world. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Rome
Tachiiri K, Shinoda M, Klinkenberg B, Morinaga Y (2008) Assessing Mongolian snow disaster risk using livestock and satellite data. J Arid Environ 72:2251–2263. doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2008.06.015
Ulgiit E, Steward T (2006) In: Mercy C (ed) The Mongolian farm management notebook, 1st edn
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (2010) Mongolia: severe winter—Dzud (Jun 2010)—Snapshot. In: ReliefWeb. http://reliefweb.int/map/mongolia/mongolia-severe-winter-dzud-jun-2010-snapshot. Accessed 30 Sep 2016
Vetter S (2005) Rangelands at equilibrium and non-equilibrium: recent developments in the debate. J Arid Environ 62:321–341
von Wehrden H, Hanspach J, Kaczensky P et al (2012) Global assessment of the non-equilibrium concept in rangelands. Ecol Appl 22:393–399
Walker BH, Carpenter SR, Rockstrom J, Crépin AS, Peterson GD (2012) Drivers, “slow” variables, “fast” variables, shocks, and resilience. Ecol Soc 17(3):30
Acknowledgements
This research was part of a study carried out by ‘Association pour le cheval de Przewalski: TAKH’ within the framework of a project on the coexistence of sympatric wild and domestic ungulates in Khomyn Tal, primarily funded by the MAVA foundation. The authors thank the foundation for its long-term support.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Joly, F., Sabatier, R., Hubert, B. et al. Livestock productivity as indicator of vulnerability to climate hazards: a Mongolian case study. Nat Hazards 92 (Suppl 1), 95–107 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-017-2963-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-017-2963-7