Reconsideration of the origins of the pastoral nomadic economy in the Eurasian Steppe

Archaeological discoveries indicate that a variety of economic models have operated in the inland areas of Asia.One of these models,pastoral nomadism,differs from agriculture,agro-pastoral,and settled pastoralism in terms of cattle-breeding,cultivation and manufacture.Pastoral nomadism is a livestock-breeding management mode of production,in which the stock is fed by uninterrupted moving in a large geographical area.The Eurasian Steppe,which includes the cold forest-steppe area in the north and the semi-arid desert-steppe in the south,is the major region in which the ancient nomadic population flourished.Because of the absence of both intrinsic motivation and external pressure for the transition to pastoral nomadism,early animal husbandry economy in the forest-steppe area could not have developed into the initial pastoral nomadic economy;instead,the pastoral nomadic economy emerged from the agro-pastoral economy in the semi-arid desert-steppe.These agro-pastoral people were forced to minimize the scale of agriculture and sedentary pastoralism and to turn to a nomadic lifestyle,with the internal cause being a shortage of feed resources caused by expansion of the human population and livestock,with the added external pressure of climatic and environmental deterioration.From archaeological findings,the eastern Tianshan area in Xinjiang,China,was a major region for the emergence of the early pastoral nomadic economy.The main evidence for this conclusion is a series of pastoral nomadic settlement sites in the northern and southern piedmonts of the Tianshan Mountains,which display settlement conditions,resources and environments entirely different from those of agricultural and agro-pastoral settlements elsewhere.

Adaptation strategies to pasture degradation： Gap between government and local nomads in the eastern Tibetan Plateau

In the last decade, there has been increasing interest in climate change, pasture degradation and its driving forces, and innovations in nomadic pastoralism on the Tibetan Plateau. However, little is known of indigenous strategies of adaptation to pasture degradation, which limits the effectiveness of adaptation strategies planned by local government. This paper analyzes nomads＇ strategies of adaptation to pasture degradation on the basis of a field survey of three townships of Dalag County in the source regions of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers. Pastures there have evidently degraded, with pastures in Wasai mainly in a state of slight or medium degradation and those in Manzhang and Jianshe in a state of medium or severe degradation. With the degradation of pasture, the grazing time is reduced, which af- fects the livelihoods of nomads. Although the Four-Package Project has commenced in this region, there is still severe fodder shortage in winter and spring. The traditional hay storage strategy does not work because of pasture degradation, and few nomads establish fenced and artificial pastures. Therefore, nomads have employed other strategies, such as renting pasture, providing supplementary feed, and diversifying their livelihoods. Local strategies taken by nomads can provide valuable insights into ecological restoration and livelihood improvement in the region and suggest changes to means promoted by local government. It is necessary to seek new means that combine the best aspects of nomadic pastoralism with modern stockbreeding technologies to help nomads adapt to pasture degeneration and improve their livelihoods.

Forest edge–interior differentiation in the epiphytic lichen diversity of the forest steppe in the Khangai Mountains, Mongolia

Aims The effects of traditional land use by mobile livestock keepers on biodiversity in forest steppe ecotones are insufficiently studied.Epiphytes are an important part of forest plant diversity.Here we analyze differences in the diversity and composition of the epiphytic lichen vegetation between the edge and the interior of Siberian larch forests in the Khangai Mountains,western Mongolia,which are highly subdivided into patches.We asked whether the epiphytic lichen vegetation at the forest edge differs significantly from that in the interior,whether the edge is inhabited by more nitrophilous species than the interior and whether the density of nomad camps around the forest affects epiphytic lichen diversity.Methods Cover percentages of epiphytic lichen species were recorded from 20 trees per plot on 6 plots in the interior and 6 plots at the edge of Larix sibirica forests.The position of nomad summer camps was surveyed using Global Positioning System.Data were analyzed with pairwise significance tests,analysis of similarities,nonmetric multidimensional scaling and canonical correspondence analysis.Important Findings The composition of the epiphytic lichen vegetation clearly differed between the two habitats,with more species being more frequent at the edge than in the interior.However,there was no difference in species richness(α-diversity).The epiphyte vegetation at the edge was more uniform and characterized by lower variation of tree-levelα-diversity and lowerβ-diversity than in the interior.At the edge,only nitrophytic lichens were dominant,whereas in the interior,nitrophytes and acidophytes were among the dominant species.This pattern is probably attributable to the spatial heterogeneity of the intensity of forest grazing and was shown to be influenced by the density of nomad summer camps in the vicinity of the forests.Tree-levelα-diversity increased with stem diameter,but high-diameter trees were rare.The results suggest that the present level of forest patchiness and the effect of forest grazing increases the diversity of epiphytic lichens on the landscape level,while logging of highdiameter trees reduces lichen diversity.