Project News

The biomass and soil pre-survey were conducted under "The JICA Project for capacity development to establish a national GHG inventory cycle of continuous improvement" in June 2019.

One of the main outputs of the JICA Project is to strengthen capacity to organize issues in the LULUCF sector and systematically improve the inventory. Specifically, an improvement of GHG estimation methodologies in grassland is the priority in Mongolia, because GHG emissions/removals from grassland are not estimated in Mongolia's BUR in spite of large grassland areas in Mongolia.

As a first step of the development of grassland GHG estimation methodologies, literature surveys were carried out until April 2019 to understand what information is currently available in grassland, and what the gaps are. Based on analysis of literature survey and discussion among domestic experts in Mongolia, the second step will be a field survey on soil data and biomass data for the development of grassland GHG estimation methodologies because more data on soil organic carbon (SOC) and above and below ground (ABG) biomass are necessary to develop these methodologies

As a part of second step, the biomass pre-survey was conducted near Hustai National Park on 16th to 17th June 2019 and the soil pre-survey was conducted near Mongol Nomadic on 20th to 21st June 2019 based on "the improvement guidance" which shows how to conduct the survey. Main objectives of pre-surveys were to check whether the surveys could be conducted based on "the improvement guidance" or not, and revise it if necessary. As the results of pre-surveys and discussion among domestic experts in Mongolia, several points such as survey formats or how to select sampling points were revised and it was revealed that surveys can be conducted based on "the revised improvement guidance".

The main biomass and soil survey will be conducted separately in August or September 2019 based on "the revised improvement guidance". The analyzed data on SOC and AGB will be obtained by the end of October 2019. The JICA experts will consider how to improve grassland GHG estimation methodologies from November based on the results of the analyzed data. Based on the consideration and discussion among domestic experts, additional surveys will be conducted in 2020. Grassland GHG estimation methodologies will be improved based on the results of the literature survey and surveys conducted in 2019 and 2020.

The biomass pre-survey

The soil pre-survey

Discussion with domestic experts during the pre-survey