Overgrazing turning parts of Mongolian Steppe into desert

Oregon State University News & Communications: Overgrazing by millions of sheep and goats is the primary cause of degraded land in the Mongolian Steppe, one of the largest remaining grassland ecosystems in the world, Oregon State University researchers say in a new report.

Using a new satellite-based vegetation monitoring system, researchers found that about 12 percent of the biomass has disappeared in this country that’s more than twice the size of Texas, and 70 percent of the grassland ecosystem is now considered degraded. The findings were published in Global Change Biology.

Overgrazing accounts for about 80 percent of the vegetation loss in recent years, researchers concluded, and reduced precipitation as a result of climatic change accounted for most of the rest. These combined forces have led to desertification as once-productive grasslands are overtaken by the Gobi Desert, expanding rapidly from the south.

Since 1990 livestock numbers have almost doubled to 45 million animals, caused in part by the socioeconomic changes linked to the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the report said. High unemployment led many people back to domestic herding.

The problem poses serious threats to this ecosystem, researchers say, including soil and water loss, but it may contribute to global climate change as well. Grasslands, depending on their status, can act as either a significant sink or source for atmospheric carbon dioxide...

Two shepherds in Mongolia, shot by JaapV, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Mining saps a thirsty desert

Michelle Tolson in IPS: The Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine in the southern Gobi desert in Mongolia has become a symbol of a looming crisis: a limited water supply that could be exhausted within a decade, seriously threatening the lives and livelihoods of the local population.

Oyu Tolgoi is one of the largest copper deposits in the world and has attracted major investors over the years, from Robert Friedland of Ivanhoe Capital Corporation, to the mining giant Rio Tinto, which now holds a majority stake in the investment, while the Mongolian government controls just 34 percent of the project.

Now, local communities fear that returns on investments will take precedence over their own subsistence, while simultaneously heightening the region’s acute water shortage. A 2010 World Bank water assessment report for the southern Gobi region projected a “lifespan” for water resources based on the number of mining projects in the pipeline, as well as a study of the region’s growing population whose primary occupation is herding and rearing livestock.

...Subsistence herders must share a limited water supply with numerous mines. A 2009 World Bank report found that mining exploration licences cover 55 percent of this area. Omongovi province, for instance, “has 63 licences issued for extraction and 400 licences for exploration.”...

A desert landscape in Inner Mongolia, shot by Fir0002, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Lake Aibi shrinks as desertification rises

Terra Daily via UPI: China faces a losing battle to restore Lake Aibi's ecosystem due to worsening desertification in the region of the salt lake, officials say. The large lake in northwestern China's Gobi region sits in an internally draining, salt-rich basin near the border of Xinjiang-Uighur province and Kazakhstan. It has been shrinking at more than 15 square miles a year because of encroaching desert.

Officials said about 580 square miles of the lake have dried up and its size has been reduced to less than 193 square miles, the Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday. Excessive land reclamation and flood irrigation are only adding to the problem. The dry earth left on the lake bed is frequently whipped up into sandstorms that plague China's northern regions every year, Xinhua reported.

The problem has not been solved despite efforts to restore the area's ecosystem in the past decade, said Gao Xiang, head of the Lake Aibi wetland reserve administration. The national wetland nature reserve covers an area of 1,030 square miles. Gao said the dried-up lake bed will become part of Mutetar Desert in four years without effective measures....

NASA image of Lake Aibi

Putting up a green shield against the Mongolian desert

Manipadma Jena in IPS: ...Lianjun’s half hectare of farmland sports neat spaced-out rows of maize crops, as in that of Hua Limei, his neighbouring farm owner, and most others on that stretch. “We earn around 400 yuans (63 dollars) from each harvested mu (15mu equals one hectare),” Limei tells IPS.

...It’s hard to believe that these farmlands and Taipingdi township were harsh sandy deserts just 60 years back. At that time, less than 66 hectares of forest were edged in by 4,500 sand dunes. Lianjun’s grandfather barely eked out a fourth of what he harvests today. Today deep forest belts shelter 10,000 hectares of Taipingdi farmland.

...As the sand progressively degrades the farmland, growing poverty creates a vicious cycle. “The poorer the farmer, the more he’s desperate to get from the land. Consequently over-farming leads to worse degradation and he loses more than he gains,” 34-year old BaoYongxin, an activist farmer from Aohan county tells IPS in Chifeng city.

...At the forest department training centre they were told about various conversion methods: covering the shifting sands with a plastic net; chemical treatment to bind the surface sand; and containing sand mobility by regular interval fencing with shrubs, stone and straw.

The Aohan community chose a combination of mechanical and biological measures to re-vegetate and reforest its land. The checker board method, after the dunes had been somewhat leveled by machine, was to draw three-feet squares that were then closely barricaded by 25 cm lengths of straw with half of their length secured into the sand....

A potato harvest in Mongolia, USAID photo

Water for Mongolia

The Fraunhofer Institute (Germany) has devised high-tech monitoring to improve Mongolia's water supply, just one of the numerous startling projects undertaken by this innovative organization: Clean water is a rare commodity in many countries of the world and governments often face problems ensuring its reliable supply. In Mongolia, an interdisciplinary research team is demonstrating how this vital resource can be efficiently managed and used. Specially developed software help to detect weak points in the supply system.

….Providing a clean supply of drinking water across the entire country is a difficult challenge – beginning with the need to lay freeze-proof water pipes over an area of 1.5 million square kilometers. The people in the countryside therefore use water from rivers, or from wells that they dig themselves. But these traditional ways of obtaining water are reaching the limits of their capacity….

"Providing a supply of drinking water is becoming more and more difficult. To create a reliable supply in the long term you have to take many different factors into account and find out how they influence each other," explains Dr. Buren Scharaw from the Fraunhofer Application Center System Technology AST in Ilmenau. Born in Mongolia, he has been working for many years on the a project entitled "Integrated Water Resources Management for Central Asia: Model Region Mongolia", known also as MoMo. ….. The model region under study by the research scientists is the catchment area for the Kharaa River and Darkhan, a city of 100,000 inhabitants.

Since the start of the project, in 2006, Scharaw has traveled back to his homeland several times. He has examined the quality of the water from public and private wells along with the distribution network, measured the energy consumption of pumps, and investigated the effectiveness of the sewage system. All of the data he has meanwhile collected has been fed into the computer models developed at Fraunhofer AST. "Our HydroDyn water management solution makes it possible for the first time to visualize the quality as well as the quantity of water resources and to model their future development," the scientist explains.

There is plenty of scope for improvement: the water pumps consume lots of energy, the water pipes are in need of repair and nearly half of the drinking water is lost on its way to the consumer because of leaks. Many yurts have their own wells, but the water is often contaminated with bacteria from latrines. What can be done? "Having collected data and produced models we are now preparing proposals that make sense in economical and ecological terms", says Scharaw. His team has developed a software program for the purpose which can determine how the water supply can be sustainably secured using less energy.

… In three years’ time, when the MoMo project has been completed, the experts intend to present the government administration in Darkhan with a catalogue of measures which will show how the water supply and sewage system can be efficiently and cost-effectively secured. Scharaw regards it as one of his major successes that he prompted the Mongolian authorities to discontinue mining operations in some regions of the Kharaa catchment area – an achievement that extends far beyond improving the drinking water supply in Darkhan.

The Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia, shot by pfctdayelise), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

UN chief in flood-ravaged Mongolia

Al-Jazeera.net: Ban Ki-moon, the UN chief, has arrived in Mongolia in order to highlight the impact climate change is having on people's everyday lives, his office has said. Ban planned to spend time in a traditional Mongolian herder community on Sunday, meeting people whose livelihoods are being hit by water shortages and desertification.

People in Ulan Bator, Mongolia's capital, were still trying to cope on Sunday with the effects of severe flash flooding, the worst since the 1960s according to aid workers. The flooding first hit in and around the city on July 17, killing a total of 24 people and damaging thousands of homes.

Conditions worsened on July 22 when more heavy rain and hail storms hit the country, signs environmentalists point to climate change. The flash floods may have been exacerbated by deforestation that allowed water to rush down bare hillsides, said Francis Markus, from the International Red Cross….