Rangeland Degradation in Mongolia – Using State and Transition Models to Help Understand Rangeland Dynamics

Rangeland degradation and soil erosion pose constant challenges to the management of natural resources in Mongolia. Large increases in livestock numbers since the early 1990s, together with increasing temperatures and higher frequency of extreme weather events have led to widespread degradation of rangeland resources, to the extent that today, nearly 57% of rangelands in Mongolia are considered degraded to some degree. New ways of understanding the dynamics of rangeland ecosystems and guidelines to conserve healthy and productive rangelands are urgently needed. The application of State and Transition Models (STMs) in ecosystem management has shown promise to understand the mechanistic processes behind rangeland degradation and to suggest appropriate interventions for maintaining the health or restoring degraded rangelands. The Green Gold-Animal Health project funded by the Swiss Development Agency in Mongolia was the first initiative aimed at developing and applying STMs to Mongolian rangeland management. Here we describe the development of STMs for the most common rangeland types in Mongolia, including the definition of reference and alternative rangeland states and “recovery classes”, based on the timelines and management actions needed to recover a reference state. Our results show that STMs are effective tools for analysing and interpreting rangeland health monitoring data and provide a scientific basis for planning and implementing resilience-based rangeland management. Furthermore, STMs facilitate synthesis of available knowledge and help identify areas where more information is needed. In summary, STMs have the potential to serve as a valuable tool for better communication of rangeland health assessments and decision making to facilitate appropriate management

Ecological Science Infrastructure for Sustainability Transformations in Rangelands

Sustainability transformations—deliberate and radical shifts in values, governance, and management regimes to achieve sustainability—are needed in rangelands as in other components of the Earth system. We review four concepts comprising an ecological science infrastructure to support such transformations. The foundation is standard measurement of rangeland conditions in the field, especially vegetation and soil properties that underpin the environmental aspects of sustainability. Big data resources, especially gridded spatial datasets produced by models and remote sensing, can be combined with field data and computational approaches to upscale information about rangeland conditions and produce additional indicators of ecosystem functions and services. State and transition models (STMs) linked to land types provide a means to interpret indicators and link interpretations to sustainable land management practices to manage change. Technologies for climate adaptation in rangelands also need to be linked to STM databases. Web and mobile technologies can put multifaceted science knowledge into the hands of pastoralists worldwide to support transformational changes in how rangelands are managed