EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

An Overgrazed Gobi

Grazing Exclusion Plot
Dream Gobi Ger Camp, Gobi Desert, Mongolia

Explanation:  This grazing exclusion plot says it all.  We are near the Dream Gobi Ger Camp, some 20 miles or so west of the city of Dalanzadgad, in the Gobi Desert of southern Mongolia.  We arrived here on 4WD SUVs driving through the desert.  The Gobi is an awesome exosystem, but is being extensively overgrazed and converted, both here and in China.  

The exclusion fence in the above photo clearly shows the influence: on the right is allowed heavy grazing by livestock as well as by native and domesticated species such as camels.  On the left is a remarkably lush alternative ecosystem that can yet develop, if overgrazing was greatly reduced or excluded.  

Among the domestic animals grazing freely across so much of the Gobi are semi-wild horses, as well as sheep, goats, and cattle, that leave little forage for the native species:  

   
Overgrazing abounds in the Gobi.

In one of my visits to the Gobi, in December 2015, I read an article "Mongolia's livestock counted" in the newspaper The Mongol Messenger, that said the government there completed a recent survey.  They reported counting 56.0 million livestock which grew, back then, by 7.6 percent over just one year.  Since their count, over a decade ago, these figures have grown reaching a peak, so far, in 2022 with 71.1 million livestock, thereafter declining to 57.6 million by 2024 but still higher than the 2015 count.   

Another stressor adding to the degradation of the Gobi ecosystem is -- you guessed it -- regional climate change (Purevjav et al. 2025).  Recent years have seen increased sandstorms and violent winds, induced by regional increases in aridity and temperature (Han et al. 2021).  

And other stressors on the Gobi have been added by coal mining and agriculture.  

One major effort to restore and conserve a native Gobi Desert ecosystem is being instituted as the Ensuring Sustainability and Resilience of Green landscapes in Mongolia (ENSURE) project, funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) and implemented by Ministry of Environment and Climate Change and UNDP.  This project includes partnerships with local governments and herders, to reverse the trends of excessive desertification and the spread of desert systems under climate change influences.

Other restoration efforts, particularly in China, include the so-called Green Great Wall of China, a.k.a. the Three-North Shelterbelt program.

May these restoration and conservation efforts succeed, to provide restored and continued habitat for the variety of native wildlife species and occupants of this wonderful, harsh, wild ecosystem.  
  

Information:
     Han, J., H. Dai, and Z. Gu.  2021.  Sandstorms and desertification in Mongolia, an example of future climate events: a review.  Environ. Chem. Lett. 19(6):4063–4073. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-021-01285-w.
     Purevjav, A-O., T. Avirmed, S. W. Wilcox, C. B. Barrett.  2025.  Climate rather than overgrazing explains most rangeland primary productivity change in Mongolia.  Science 389(6766):1229-1233. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adn0005.