Desertification in Mongolia : an overview

Scientific efforts have gone toward tackling desertification in Mongolia since the Mongolian-Turkmen joint dryland study project implemented in 1990. These works mainly concentrated on defining desertification, determining its causes, assessing its spatial distribution and severity, as well as defining appropriate methods to rehabilitate and restore desertified land ensuring sustainable livelihood in drylands. This paper presents results of the study conducted in period of 2004-2007 in purpose to assess extent and severity of desertification/land degradation in Mongolia. Mongolia is facing a serious desertification problem. Most of the affected areas are located in the southern, western and south east parts of the country. They are caused by both environmental settings and inappropriate human activities. To date according to the assessment researches totally 72 per cents of the territory more or less desertified of which 23 % - slightly, 26 % moderately, 18 % heavily and 5 % very heavily. Some of the problems facing Mongolian researchers are how to define desertification properly and how to assess the exact role played by human-related and environmental factors in desertification. Due to the insufficient amount of data collected, it is difficult to differentiate the impact of anthropogenic desertification effectively from that of environmental desertification.