Project News

The first biomass and soil survey were conducted under "The JICA Project for capacity development to establish a national GHG inventory cycle of continuous improvement" from August to September 2019 in Mongolia.

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 biomass (ABG) are necessary to develop these methodologies. As a part of second step, the biomass pre-survey and soil pre-survey were conducted on June 2019 and "the improvement guidance" was revised based on the results of pre-surveys.

The main biomass survey was conducted from August 13th to September 7th 2019 (including 2 days off). Over 10 experts travelled from Selenge Shaamar via Ulaanbaatar to Dornogobi Ulaanbadrakh by cars, stayed mainly in the simple tents during the survey, and collected about 200 biomass samples based on "the revised improvement guidance." The local consultant team will analyze data on AGB by November 2019.

The main soil survey was conducted from September 1st to 16th September in Khentii, Sukhbaatar, and Dornogovi aimag. The soil survey team collected more than 200 soils samples based on "the revised improvement guidance". The local consultant team will analyze data on SOC by November 2019.

Based on the results of the analyzed data, the JICA experts will consider how to improve grassland GHG estimation methodologies with Mongolian experts from November. The third LULUCF working group meeting will be held in the spring of 2020 to discuss how to improve GHG emissions/removals from grassland will and what kind of additional surveys will be necessary. The additional surveys will be conducted in 2020 summer based on the discussion in the working group. Grassland GHG estimation methodologies will be improved based on the results of the literature survey and surveys conducted in 2019 and 2020.

The main biomass survey

Check biomass samples by survey members

The main soil survey

Stay in survey field