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| Spatial and temporal variability in vegetation cover of Mongolia and its implications |
| Sumiya VANDANDORJ1, Batdelger GANTSETSEG1, Bazartseren BOLDGIV2* |
1 Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Environment, Ulaanbaatar 210646, Mongolia;
2 Ecology Group, Department of Biology, School of Arts and Sciences, National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar 14201, Mongolia |
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Abstract In this paper, we attempted to determine the most stable or unstable regions of vegetation cover in Mongolia and their spatio-temporal dynamics using Terra/MODIS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) dataset, which had a 250-m spatial resolution and comprised 6 periods of 16-day composited temporal resolution data (from 10 June to 13 September) for summer seasons from 2000 to 2012. We also used precipitation data as well as biomass data from 12 meteorological stations located in 4 largest natural zones of Mongolia. Our study showed that taiga and forest steppe zones had relatively stable vegetation cover because of forest characteristics and relatively high precipitation. The highest coefficient of variation (CV) of vegetation cover occurred frequently in the steppe and desert steppe zones, mainly depending on variation of precipitation. Our results showed that spatial and temporal variability in vegetation cover (NDVI or plant biomass) of Mongolia was highly dependent on the amount, distribution and CV of precipitation. This suggests that the lowest inter-annual CV of NDVI can occur during wet periods of growing season or in high precipitation regions, while the highest inter-annual CV of NDVI can occur during dry periods and in low precipitation regions. Although the desert zone received less precipitation than other natural zones of the country, it had relatively low variation compared to the steppe and desert steppe, which could be attributed to the very sparse vegetation in the desert.
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Received: 26 June 2014
Published: 10 August 2015
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| Fund: his study was funded by the Green Gold Phase IV Project of the Swiss Development Cooperation Agency. A partial support for this study has also been provided by the Asia Research Center, Mongolia. |
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Corresponding Authors:
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