Rangeland health assessment in the meadow steppe region of Inner Mongolia: Integrating herder perception and field sampling

Controlling rangeland degradation has been the key issue of Chinese rangeland management. However,the research of rangeland degradation mainly be based on scientific methods,and neglects the importance of local herders,who have been directly responsible for rangelands. They have their own perceptions about the rangeland condition. This has resulted in conflicts between scientific methods and herder perception, and then adversely the affected effective implementation of conservation programs. In this paper,an explorative study was conducted to integrate herder perception and field sampling to assess rangeland condition at the household scale,in the meadow steppe region of Inner Mongolia. The households were divided into high, medium, and low economic levels based on survey data. A Condition-VigorOrganization-Resilience(CVOR) model was used to calculate the health index of rangelands under different householdeconomic levels. Results showed that both methods used many of the same indicators to assess rangeland condition. Results of both methods indicated that the rangelands were unhealthy and degraded. Among the rangelands,there were no significant differences between herder perception and CVOR assessment results(P > 0.05) under different household economic levels.Results demonstrated the feasibility and reliability of using herder perception to assess rangeland condition in terms of evaluation criteria and results. The integration of herder perception and scientific methods has potential to contribute to assessing and monitoring rangelands.