SPATIAL-TEMPORAL CHANGES OF LAND DEGRADATION CAUSED BY NATURAL AND HUMAN INDUCED FACTORS: CASE STUDY OF BULGAN PROVINCE IN CENTRAL MONGOLIA

Abstract

Land degradation and desertification have been ranked as a major environmental issue for arid and semi-arid regions is a comprehensive concept that depends on many factors. Detecting early land degradation is a significant issue of social and environmental with geographical information system (GIS) and remote sensing methods has been used for the interpretation of spatial-temporal data. In this study, the assessment of the current state of land degradation is influenced by several complexes of the natural and anthropological causes. The results of land degradation assessment carried out for Bulgan province of Mongolia using multi-temporal resourced data as climate condition (vegetation growing season of temperature and precipitation), land use type (density of seasonal camps of herder households, roads, cropland, settlements) and MODIS vegetation product data were used to estimate land degradation change period from 2000 to 2018 and accessed it’s for effecting on degradation over last 19 years. We obtained a prediction of land degradation integrated with indicators and based on the spatial pattern of human influence. One of the main indicators for land degradation was land use type as pasture usage of livestock husbandry in Bulgan province, overgrazing is the most widespread cause of land degradation, particularly around permanent location of herders and livestock affecting about moderately and slightly degraded land is 72.78% of study total area.