Get reliable rangeland science

Mongolia is a large pastoral landlocked country; livestock production is considered the key component in the Mongolian economy. However, droughts followed by extremely cold winter conditions (dzud), can lead to livestock massive losses that affect pastoralists' livelihoods. In order to examine some of the conditions that can lead to dzud livestock losses, we built a simulation model that included climate factors, forage availability, and livestock life cycles to analyze livestock species resilience across three ecological zones of Mongolia. We conducted 24 year simulations based on historical forage and climate data. By using the single control variable method of simulation, we analyzed resilience of sheep and cattle within three major ecological zones (forest-steppe, steppe and desert-steppe). Livestock forage demand was estimated by forage intake based on each livestock species seasonal forage intake amount. Forage availability was acquired from PHYGROW simulation model outputs reported by the Mongolia Livestock Early Warning System. To define climatic conditions of dzud in the simulations, we defined dzud as periods having average minimum temperature ?-30�C and monthly average of snow depth ?20cm. Mortality greater than 10% was considered a dzud disaster. Our modeling analyses results indicated that the months of February, March and April had the highest susceptibility to dzud loses. The most frequent dzud occurring month at forest-steppe is in February, steppe is March and desert-steppe is April. Cattle dzud mortality was generally less than sheep. Comparing the model results with district livestock numbers, the model performed well in estimating livestock losses with climatic conditions like that of the 1999-2002 dzud. Models such as this may be useful for providing near-term estimates of livestock losses based on forecast climate and forage conditions. This, in turn, can assist herders and policy makers in contingency planning for dzud prior to the onset of winter.