Bayan-Unjuul and Nalaikh: Mongolian pilot sites
Collaboration & Stakeholder involvements
Project Overview
We are participating in RAPP with two pilot sites in steppe, which covers larger area of the whole country, and both pilots are under research cooperation with the Institute of Research and Information of Meteorological, Hydrological and Environment and University of Tottori, University of Nagoya, Frontier Observation Research System for Global Change (FORSGC). The projects mainly intend to identify not only climate change issues, plant community degradation with extensive grazing, desertification, but it also associates in-situ data with satellite images were available.
Main contact point details
Khudulmur Sodov, Ganbat Bavuudorj (ganbat_bavuudorj (at) ymail.com), Erdenetsetseg Baasandai
Sites description (pilot sites 1, 2)
So far, large-scale climate change issues including global warming has been demonstrated, as frequent and intensive natural disasters occurred in most grassland in Asia such as Mongolia. In order to monitor the response of a Mongolian grassland ecosystem, the experiment projects was conducted at Bayan-Unjuul (47.04N, 105.95E) in the Mongolian typical steppe, where there is extensive native grassland during the growing season, and Nalaikh (47.75N, 107.33E) which was selected to expose contrast of the urban affection. Cooperation between IRIMHE and FORSGC in hydro-meteorological observation is existing at ACOS site in Nalaikh.
Bayan-Unjuul (1)
The climatological (1995-2004) annual precipitation is 172.9mm, concentrated on the summer months of May- August, while the annual mean temperature is 0.1 degC, with soil freezing during the winter. This study site is co-dominated by perennial grasses such as Stipa krylovii, Agropyron cristatum, and Cleistogenes squarrosa and annual forbs such as Artemisia adamsii and Chenopodium album. In order to clarify the seasonal and inter-annual changes in ecological alteration, we have been doing measurements on meteorological, CO2 exchange, soil and plant parameters, in an area of 300m x 300m surrounded by a fence for protecting from grazing.
1, 2. Automation instruments for environment
3. Enclosed fence 300m2 which has AMS 4. Surroundings around research field
5, 6. Experiment of the CO2 exchange between terrestrial (soil and plant) and atmosphere
Nalaikh (2)
The pilot site situated in contrast of native grassland and urban area, monsoon-influenced, cold semi-arid climate that closely borders a subarctic climate, therefore the weather is severely harsh with difference, cold and dry winters with a minimum temperature of -49 degC and hot summer with a maximum temperature of 39 degC.
1, 2. Automation instruments in the enclosed Nalaikh pilot site
3. Animal dropppings (manure) such as horse, adding nitrate into the soil 4. Surroundings around research field
In-situ Observations and agency database
We conduct seasonal research on ecology and permanent measurement are taken on environment parameters. The measurements include: plant height, condition, biomass, climate data, air quality, CO2 flux between terrestrial and atmosphere from 2004, and meteorological station takes place nearby. (300 m x 300 m) in Bayan-Unjuul. All data collected since 2005 are stored as digital on the server.
In addition, in-situ measurement include vegetation observations such as height of grass, coverage ratio, biomass, water content of grasses and LAI, vertical distribution of grass root biomass from May to September. An automatic meteorological station was set up at the site to measure weather conditions such as wind speed and air temperature. In winter, the study describes the progress and presents preliminary results of snow observations including height and density at the Nalaikh site.
EO Data requirements
Landsat 5–TM
MODIS MCD43A4 reflectance, MOD13A1 vegetation indices
Landsat-8
Sentinel-2
Sentinel-3
SPOT5
QuickBird
Worldview2
Location
Pilot site 1 (Bayan-Unjuul): 47.043484, 105.951553
Pilot site 2: Nalaikh 47.753206, 107.334550
Implementation Plans
The plan will follow soon.
Recent remote sensing/modelling activities
Institute of Research and Information of Meteorological, Hydrological and Environment has receives EO data from satellites such as of MODIS, NOAA, FY-2 real time for both initial bands and subsequent products. Furthermore, IRIMHE manages the satellite data storage system for satellites, also publishes and shares other valuable information (Temperature, Precipitation, Wildfire, NDVI, Snow Coverage, Land Surface Temperature and Dust) extracted from satellite data. Thus, various activities of remote sensing have been carried out by IRIMHE, such as drought assessment, application of evaluating AGB, land cover mapping, winter risk assessment, but also subsystems has been producing images such energy balance.
For the pilot sites, correlated research work with satellite processing is rare but some exist already, such as “Monitoring aboveground biomass in semiarid grassland using MODIS images (Tomoko N, Ganbat B et al., 2012)” in Bayan-Unjuul etc.