How important are water sources to pastoralist movement in times of climate change? : A modelling approach.

Abstract: Livestock grazing is an important part for the livelihood of a large part of the world’s population. While in some areas of the world water accessibility is often taken for granted, in arid regions this can be a limited resource. The central Asian country of Mongolia is one of the countries that sees excessive livestock grazing in an arid region. Nomadic pastoralism is widespread to ensure access to fresh water sources as well as pastures. These movement patterns are under ongoing research, but so far, the impact of water accessibility on these movement patterns has not been investigated. Specifically in the Great Gobi B Strictly Protected Area, pastoralists rely on water obtained from a variety of sources like lakes, rivers, and wells. I analysed camp usage and the availability of water for pastoralists to uncover current movement patterns and how these are influenced by water. I want to gain insight on how the distance to the closest water source influences camp usage and how this changes with seasonality and the size of the herd. For this I conducted Kruskal-Wallis and two-sided Pearson tests respectively. A potential overlap between wildlife and livestock was investigated since this might be a potential conflict and further leading to the spread of diseases. Furthermore, I modelled precipitation and temperature until the year 2050 to spot a potential redistribution of water in an already arid region. There was no correlation found between the seasons nor herd size and the distance to the closest and second closest water source. In my analysis, the overlap between wildlife and livestock was found only to a minor extend. Precipitation and temperature in the region were found to change only to a marginal degree from 2023 to 2050. Due to this, I identified the most important water sources and camps based on the analysisof the current data.