Cooperating countries: Mongolia and Austria

Coordinating institution: University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna

Project coordinator: Maximiliane Herberich

Partner institution: Mongolian National University of Education

Project duration: 01.01.2024 - 31.12.2026

Overexploitation and climate change threaten biodiversity and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems globally. This is especially problematic for countries whose people’s economy and culture are strongly rooted in the use of local ecosystems.

Mongolia is a landlocked country with extreme climatic conditions resulting in fragile terrestrial ecosystems. Half of the population lives on the countryside as (nomadic) pastoralists and is heavily dependent on the functioning of ecosystems. Biodiversity loss, and the thereof resulting loss of ecosystem functioning, thus directly affect the well-being of people.

To ensure a sustainable conservation of biodiversity, we need to understand the temporal stability of its multiple aspects such as different taxa and their relationship. This interdisciplinary project will investigate the diversity of multiple taxa (plants, insects, mammals, birds) over three successive years in the Khasagt Khairkhan Mountain, Western Mongolia. Extensive cross-taxon surveys with structured protocols will be used for a first description of biodiversity of each target taxon in that region. These surveys will further serve to disentangle diversity relationships among taxa, and thus be able to predict cascading effects of diversity loss.

Furthermore, the strength and direction of diversity relationships among multiple taxa will be used to identify possible indicator taxa which may predict variation in the diversity of others. This projects furthermore investigates multiple levels of diversity within single taxa from genes to functional traits such as dispersal vectors to species richness will be investigates. Our findings will build capacities to better assess biodiversity from genes to the ecosystem.