Abstract
Pastoral people in rangelands worldwide are experiencing uncertainty due to a combination of climatic, economic, and political stressors. Our study seeks to create a full view of the drivers, impacts, and adaptations to change for livestock herders in rural Mongolia, making use of herder traditional knowledge and select instrumental data. Interview respondents described undesirable trends in livestock herds, pasture, wildlife, and their livelihoods in three sites in northern, central, and eastern Mongolia from 1995 to 2015, including decreased lake levels. There was more agreement for precipitation trends than for temperature. We developed a systems model based on herder descriptions of the sequence and prominence of interacting drivers of change. Finally, we describe measures herders are taking to adapt to these changes, such as more frequent livestock movement. We present a transdisciplinary view of social-ecological change and applications for more regionally focused governance in an era of climate uncertainty.
Highlights
The extensive rangelands of the world support pastoral peoples, livestock, and wildlife in often harsh and variable climates, physically remote from human population and market centers
Landlocked Mongolia (1000–1500 m.a.s.l.) spans several ecological zones from the Gobi Desert, which straddles the Mongolian border with China, to the forest taiga, which borders the Siberian part of Russia
Every Yeroo herder in our study reported shorter rainfall events compared with 61% of herders who observed this in a similar study in Lake Hövsgöl, Mongolia, to the northwest of Yeroo (Goulden et al 2016)
Summary
The extensive rangelands of the world support pastoral peoples, livestock, and wildlife in often harsh and variable climates, physically remote from human population and market centers. Multi-faceted drivers of change threaten the future sustainability and resilience of rangeland ecosystems and their pastoral cultures (Galvin 2009; Reid et al 2014). Climate change will alter ecosystem functioning in rangelands worldwide (Joyce et al 2013). Precipitation will become more variable, in some latitudes increasing and others decreasing (Reid et al 2014). There is demand for alternative uses of rangeland landscapes, such as for housing, cropland, and extractive industry development; these uses all restrict herding and wildlife movements (Galvin et al 2008; Herrick et al 2012). Broad-scale changes play out in different landscapes in unique ways, which means that localized understandings of change will be important to support place-based pastoral adaptations to change
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