Environmental Changes in Central Asian High Elevation Communities: Land Surface Phenology and Snow Cover Seasonality in Kyrgyz Highland Pastures

Principal Investigator: Geoffrey Henebry

Prior to the Soviet era, highlanders in Central Asia practiced vertical transhumance in raising livestock-sheep and goats-for wool, meat, milk, and hides. Collectivization disrupted this practice with multiple external subsidies. Since 1991 montane agro-pastoralism has been disrupted by withdrawal of external subsides and introduction of a market economy. Moreover, montane agropastoralism is highly vulnerable to environmental change.

Our project evaluates four aspects of environmental change in human settlements and associated pasturelands in representative areas in the Kyrgyz Republic during the satellite era and projected changes into the middle of the 21st century to assess impacts on these highland communities and the pastures upon which they depend.

The four aspects of environmental change are (1) changes in the thermal regime, including growing season timing and extremes, (2) changes in the moisture regime, including peak precipitation timing andonset and duration of snow cover, (3) changes in socio-economic conditions, including impacts of globalization through labor migration and remittance income, and (4) changes in land cover, land use, and land condition,

including alterations in terrain. 

To date we have been focusing on highland communities in four rayons in the Kyrgyz Republic: At-Bashy and Naryn in Naryn oblast, and Alay and Chong-Alay in Osh oblast. We have developed a novel approach to characterizing seasonal land surface dynamics in mountainous terrain through blending Landsat surface reflectance data and MODIS land surface temperature and snow cover products with 30 m DEM data. Modeling the land surface phenology with a simple quadratic model yields two phenological metrics: Peak Height (PH) of NDVI and Thermal time to Peak (TTP). Phenometric lapse rates-change in phenometrics as a function of elevation-enable us to characterize land surface phenology and snow cover seasonality in highland pastures using the thermal time metrics growing degree-days and frost degree-days, respectively, calculated from MODIS land surface temperature data. Of particular interest are the influences of snow cover melt date and snow cover duration on subsequent metrics of land surface phenology-peak height and thermal time to peak-as modulated by terrain (elevation, slope, and aspect). 

During our July 2016 field campaign in Naryn oblast, we gathered data on the subpixel (<30 m) heterogeneity in pastures of different seasons of use (winter, summer, and spring/fall) and condition (degraded or not). We are currently linking these ground data to the land surface phenometrics.

   

Labor migration from rural communities to urban areas within Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, or Russia is widespread, and the money sent home by the migrants constitutes a sizeable portion of the Kyrgyz Republic's GDP-over a quarter in 2015 as estimated by the World Bank (World Bank 2017a). Remittances form direct linkages between economies by way of families. They are instances of "telecoupling" in miniature: downturns in the economy hosting the labor migrants reducing remittances, which generates negative consequences for the recipient families and their communities, but for institutions of government through reduced tax revenues (Abdih et al. 2012). World Bank recently reported that global remittances were down for a second year in the row, with remittances to Central Asia declining for the third straight year due to lower oil prices and the devaluation of Russian ruble relative to the US dollar (World Bank 2017b).  
With the assistance of local teachers and government officials, we collected during the July 2016 field campaign nearly 600 questionnaires and 50 in-depth interviews with villagers in Naryn oblast, especially in the At-Bashy valley, about labor migration and its manifold effects, particularly on the left-behind children. During our July 2017 field campaign, we shall shift our sampling efforts to Alay and Chong-Alay rayons in Osh oblast to gather comparable data about pastures and the communities that rely on them.

References

Abdih Y, A Barajas, R Chami, C Ebeke. 2012. Remittances Channel and Fiscal Impact in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. IMF Working Paper WP/12/104

World Bank. 2017a. http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/migrationremittancesdiasporaissues

World Bank. 2017b. http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2017/04/21/remittances-to-developing-countries-decline-for-second-consecutive-year

Read more about the project