Assessing Mongolian snow disaster risk using livestock and satellite data

Tachiiri, Kaoru; Shinoda, Masato; Klinkenberg, Brian; Morinaga, Yuki

doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2008.06.015

Cited by 123 publications

(92 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Afterward, the increasing tendency strengthened in Mongolia. There, the decreased density during 2000-2003 was caused by harsh cold-season weather (dzud in Mongolian) during the three seasons from 1999-2000 to 2001-2002 following summer droughts (e.g., Tachiiri et al 2008;Begzsuren et al 2004). It is believed that similar weather conditions resulted in livestock mortality in China during the 1999-2000 cold season.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hotspots of recent drought in Asian steppes

Shinoda

Nandintsetseg²,

Nachinshonhor

et al. 2013

Reg Environ Change

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The present study aims to identify hotspots on the Asian steppe that were vulnerable to widespread drought events in the Northern Hemisphere during 1999-2002, using newly proposed indices of vegetation response (sensitivity and resilience) to drought. Drought sensitivity is defined as vegetation response to decreased precipitation from pre-drought to drought phases, and resilience is defined as response to increased precipitation from drought to post-drought phases. Thus, the sensitivity and resiliency indices SI and RI are similarly expressed as normalized change of vegetation relative to that of precipitation. We also develop new regionally adjusted indices SI r and RI r , to do an interregional comparison of vegetation dynamics. In general, the resilience (RI r or RI) was larger than sensitivity (SI r or SI) over the entire region, whereas they had similar amplitudes over a wetter region (forest steppe). This asymmetric response of SI r \ RI r , which manifested over the desert steppe/steppe regions, is explained by interannual change of plant species composition (i.e., larger ratio of annual/perennial species for the post-drought year of 2003). As for the steppe region, the Chinese section had much higher resilience during the post-drought year compared with the Mongolian one. This may be attributable to the larger annual/perennial ratio, but is not strongly related to grazing pressure. Spatial and temporal analyses of the indices identified locations where there was not resilience from drought-affected vegetation conditions despite increased precipitation, and/or where long-term stability of vegetation is under threat.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hotspots of recent drought in Asian steppes

Shinoda

Nandintsetseg²,

Nachinshonhor

et al. 2013

Reg Environ Change

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“…Whilst there has been notable research on dzud impacts (Tachiiri et al 2008;Middleton et al 2015;Rao et al 2015), the drought-dzud link is often inferred rather than investigated. As a cold, dry environment limited rainfall and severe winter conditions (temperatures to -40°C) are threats to pastoral livelihoods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating the presumed causal links between drought and dzud in Mongolia

Sternberg

2017

Nat Hazards

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Extreme weather events present environmental and social challenges across the Eurasian steppe. In Mongolia much attention is given to drought and dzud (severe winter conditions) impact on rural livelihoods, landscapes and governance. A link between the two events, fostered by international and state agencies, speculates that drought leads to dzud; this has become the widely accepted doctrine. However, the relationship between the two events is assumed rather than analysed. Whilst there may be natural links between climate events, causality is more difficult to establish yet often claimed post-event. This paper stresses Mongolia's destructive dzuds of 1999-2001 and 2009-2010 in examining drought frequency before dzud events. Findings question the hazard connection as just 3 of 32 examined dzud events were preceded by drought. Investigation did not document a relationship between the disasters; linkages between extreme events were implied rather than established. The human role in disaster also needs to be assessed as preparation, and response are key factors for mitigation. Study results identified a lack of causality between the disasters, suggesting more assiduous investigation of hazards is needed in Mongolia. This can clarify causal factors, identify risk and improve disaster mitigation strategies in Mongolia.

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“…Zhang et al (2008) proposed some indicators and methods for quantification of those indicators for early warning of snow disaster in the pastoral areas of northern Qinghai Province. Tachiiri et al (2008) evaluated the economic loss of snow disasters in arid inland pastoral areas of Mongolia using a tree-based regression model with parameters including livestock mortality rate of current year, grassland NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index), SWE (snow water equivalent), and livestock numbers and mortality rates of previous years. In addition, Tominaga et al (2011) predicted snow cover area and potential extent of snow disasters in built-up environments by combining a meteorological model and a computational fluid dynamics model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early warning of snow-caused disasters in pastoral areas on the Tibetan Plateau

Wang

Liang

Huang

et al. 2013

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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This study develops a model for early warning of snow-caused livestock disasters on a county basis and proposes a method of qualitative risk assessment of snow disasters at 500 m resolution for pastoral areas on the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Data used for the model development include remote sensing data, statistical data of weather, livestock, and social economy, and 45 typical snow disaster cases from 2000 to 2010. The principal component analysis (PCA) approach is used to choose 7 crucial factors that contribute over 85% of information for early warning snow disasters on the TP. They are mean annual probability of snow disaster, number of snow-covered days, livestock stocking rate, continual days of mean daily temperature below −10 °C, grassland burial index, rate of snow-covered grassland, and per livestock gross domestic product. The chosen 411 cases from 2008 to 2010 are used to validate the prediction results from the developed early warning model, with an overall accuracy of 85.64% in predicting snow disasters and no disasters. This suggests that the early warning approach developed in the study has operational potential for predicting snow disasters on the TP

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Assessing Mongolian snow disaster risk using livestock and satellite data

Cited by 123 publications

References 25 publications

Hotspots of recent drought in Asian steppes

Hotspots of recent drought in Asian steppes

Investigating the presumed causal links between drought and dzud in Mongolia

Early warning of snow-caused disasters in pastoral areas on the Tibetan Plateau

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