ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the landlocked Mongolian Plateau in the eastern part of the Eurasian continent. The Plateau lies at relatively high altitudes averaging 1,580m at middle latitudes. Hazards in Mongolia are characterised by the '4Ds': drought, dzud, dust storms and desertification that occur interactively. In Mongolia, growing drought frequency has had increasingly important effects on animal husbandry and pasturing. In Mongolia, with its cold, arid climate, approximately 35 per cent of the work-force was engaged in stock farming in 2011. While documentation of dzud events dates back 2000 years, Tsedevsuren et al. have catalogued drought and dzud occurrences in central and eastern Mongolia from 1740 to 1921. In Mongolia, pastoral livestock husbandry has suffered repeatedly from drought and dzud. On the Mongolian Plateau, water erosion is predominant in the forest–steppe area, wind erosion in the steppe–desert, while vegetation degradation affects the entire region.
