Modeling Integrated Impacts of Climate Change and Grazing on Mongolia’s Rangelands

Virginia Anne Kowal, Julian Ahlborn, Chantsallkham Jamsranjav, Otgonsuren Avirmed and Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer
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Virginia Anne Kowal: Natural Capital Project, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Julian Ahlborn: Sustainable Grassland Systems, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, D-14641 Paulinenaue, Germany
Chantsallkham Jamsranjav: Wildlife Conservation Society Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar-14200, Mongolia
Otgonsuren Avirmed: Wildlife Conservation Society Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar-14200, Mongolia
Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer: Natural Capital Project, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-28

Abstract: Mongolia contains some of the largest intact grasslands in the world, but is vulnerable to future changes in climate and continued increases in the number of domestic livestock. As these are two major drivers of change, it is important to understand interactions between the impact of climate and grazing on productivity of Mongolia’s rangelands and the livelihoods they sustain. We use a gridded, spatially explicit model, the Rangeland Production Model (RPM), to explore the simultaneous and interacting effects of climate and management changes on Mongolia’s rangeland and future livestock production. Comparing the relative impact of temperature, precipitation, and grazing intensity, varied individually and in combination, we find that climatic factors dominate impacts on forage biomass and animal diet sufficiency. Site rainfall strongly mediates the impact of grazing on standing biomass, such that more productive or higher-rainfall sites are more vulnerable to increases in grazing pressure. Gridded simulations covering Mongolia’s Gobi-Steppe ecoregion show that while rangeland biomass is generally predicted to increase under future climate conditions, interactions among spatially varying drivers create strong heterogeneity in the magnitude of change.

Keywords: grazing impact; climate change; rangeland condition; ecological model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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