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> herds are struggling through both a “white” dzud, in which very deep snow hinders their access to grass, and an “iron” dzud, in which a brief thaw is followed
by brabel 3y ago
> herds are struggling through both a “white” dzud, in which very deep snow hinders their access to grass, and an “iron” dzud, in which a brief thaw is followed by a rapid, hard freeze, locking pastures in ice.
That's the worst... where I live, the temperature tends to get just above zero after snowstorms, just enough to make the snow wet and more compact, and then when it freezes over again it's basically a piece of ice which takes ages to melt later. I suppose that with the weather previously being more stable, it wouldn't do that often in Mongolia? But now that it both snows more and the temperature varies more widely, this is a recipe for disaster. Hope they find ways to adapt with the help of modern tools, but of course it's easier said than done, specially when they probably don't have any money to invest in things that could help and even if they could, the infrastructure just doesn't exist.
- johnchristopher 3y ago> Hope they find ways to adapt with the help of modern tools, but of course it's easier said than done, specially when they probably don't have any money to invest in things that could help and even if they could, the infrastructure just doesn't exist. Only way so far apparently in Mongolia has been to migrate to cities.
- SR2Z 3y agoThe overwhelming majority (90%+, IIRC) of Mongolia already lives in Ulanbataar. They have different winter-related problems there (severe coal smog) but at least they're not at the mercy of ice on the pastures.
- prlambert 3y agoNot sure why you think that? The nomadic population is between 25%-30%, two sources: 1) World bank gives 25% "around one quarter of households live nomadic life in Mongolia" https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/counting-uncounted-how-mongolian-nomadic-survey-leaving-no-one-behind https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/counting-uncounted-how-...; 1) Wikipedia gives 30%, "Approximately 30% of the population is nomadic or semi-nomadic" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolia. Population of of Ulaanbataar is 1.6M, Mongolia as a country is 3.3M. So just under 50% live in the capital city.