Nomadic pastoralism and desertification

Abstract

Region-specific methods of agriculture were invented fitting in with the local natural resources and developed in the sequence characterized by each of major climo-vegetation types in the world (forest, woodland, and grassland/desert), whereas the corresponding region-specific type of desertification occurred if agricultural impacts exceeded the resilience of the natural resources (Shinoda, 2021). In central Eurasia, which is located in the grassland/desert region, nomadic pastoralism has survived for several thousands of years, avoiding an occurrence of serios desertification, whereas the large-scale cereal and irrigated agriculture under the Soviet Union regime led to the region-specific types of desertification such as wind erosion and soil salinization, respectively. As for Mongolia, urgent countermeasures are required to avoid an irreversible degradation of the thousand-year-sustained grassland ecosystem under the overgrazing pressure driven by the market economy.