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Item Building an inclusive land management and conservation decision-making system with local stakeholders of Ulaan Taiga Special Protected Area in Mongolia(Montana State University - Bozeman, The Graduate School, 2022) Dovchin, Badamgarav; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Christine Rogers Stanton; Christine Stanton, Suzanne Held, Kristin Ruppel, Paul Lachapelle, Tumursukh Jal, herders user groups and the Community Advisory Board were co-authors of the article, 'Twin ride: integrating WSEK and TEK in Mongolia (literature review)' submitted to the journal 'The other ways of knowing' which is contained within this dissertation.; Christine Stanton, Suzanne Held, Kristin Ruppel, Paul Lachapelle, Tumursukh Jal, herders user groups and the Community Advisory Board were co-authors of the article, 'Community-based participatory research in action: lessons from communities in the Ulaan Taiga Special Protected Area bufferzone communities' submitted to the journal 'Journal of land management and appraisal' which is contained within this dissertation.; Christine Stanton, Suzanne Held, Kristin Ruppel, Paul Lachapelle, Tumursukh Jal, herders user groups and the Community Advisory Board were co-authors of the article, 'Building an inclusive decision-making system for buffer zone land management and conservation of Ulaan Taiga Special Protected Area' submitted to the journal 'The other ways of knowing' which is contained within this dissertation.Environmental degradation and its management are pressing issues worldwide, especially in developing countries. Mongolia is a nomadic culture country with publicly owned land grazed by privately owned herds of domestic animals experiencing intense land degradation (Ministry of Environment and Tourism of Mongolia, 2018). The Eurocentric system (Koobak et al., 2021) Western Science-Based Ecological Knowledge (WSEK) (Studley, 1998) was introduced first by communism, then global North aid programs. Mongolian government fully adopted WSEK methods despite the reality that people of Mongolia still utilize Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) (Berkes, 2012; Jamsranjav et al., 2019). Gradually the disconnect between the stakeholders increased over the last 100 years. Climate change, socioeconomic pressures on publicly owned land, and multiple stakeholders who practice different decision-making systems call for collaborative facilitation and interventions. The purpose of this study is to examine the following two major points: 1. The possibility of addressing the land degradation issues by integrating TEK and WSEK through Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) facilitations in the Darhad Valley, Mongolia (2014-2020). 2. The perceptions of buffer zone communities of Ulaan Taiga Special Protected Area (UTSPA) regarding their ability to manage their land and the ecosystem services it provides. Guidance and participation of locals and advisory board across all steps in the research process (Hallett et al., 2017; Stanton, 2014), and application of a CBPR framework help rebalance the power dynamics among the stakeholders (Coombe et al., 2020a) and bring shared ownership (D'Alonzo, 2010) and trust (P. R. Lachapelle & McCool, 2012) to decision-making. Our team concluded that integrated epistemologies offer added strength and innovation in addressing some of the complex challenges. We found that the 'twin ride' (integration) of WSEK and TEK complement each other (Maweu, 2011). CBPR provides a framework to facilitate collaboration, apply theory to practice in culturally and epistemologically appropriate ways specific to the host community (Stanton et al., 2020), and help overcome various barriers such as loss of trust, institutional differences, and give time to collectively develop shared goals (P. R. Lachapelle et al., 2003). CBPR is a complicated but rewarding, potentially healing process (Stanton, 2014a; Waddell et al., 2020).Item Using holistic management steps towards improving soil and vegetation quality and family resiliency in Mongolia(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2014) Dovchin, Badamgarav; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Cliff MontagneMongolian herders are still practicing traditional nomadic pastoralism as their main source of life. In the last 100 years Mongolians have been experiencing dramatic political and economic change. The democratic revolution in 1990 let the herders own herds, but not the pasture. Livestock numbers increased from 25 to 47 million within last 20 years, all grazing on common land. Due to climatic and grazing practice changes and socio-economic issues, more than 70% of Mongolian pasture has been classified as degraded (UNDP, 2012). Since land privatization is not suitable for the traditional herding system, Mongolians are searching for solutions for pasture degradation by attempting to define the optimum-stocking rate for sustainable pasture use. The objectives of this study are to assess the Holistic Management (HM) application at family level decision-making and compare soil and vegetation quality at high and low stocking rate pastures. Application of HM allows us to integrate both traditional and scientific knowledge of pasture to help improve the pasture management decision-making by effectively addressing the pasture degradation within its whole socio-economic and ecological scenario. This project included learning about one family's decision-making process to document it as a pre-HM application, conducting HM workshops with the family, documenting their new decision-making processes, and with the study team and participant family to build the Resource Base Profile (RBP). After 6 months we compared the major changes and implementations of HM application, revised the RBP, and compared the two RBPs to assess changes. We sampled soil and vegetation at the herder's pastures of high and low stocking rate at the peak of growing season (July). We then compared those characteristics with the soil and vegetation quality that they prefer at their pastures. The two pastures differed significantly for both soil and vegetation parameters depending on the slope and aspect of the sampling point. In conclusion, for the study families, higher stocking rate has negative effects on pasture quality and it is contributing to pasture degradation in Mongolia. Herders using HM decision-making process and learning to assess soil and vegetation quality on their pastures are changing their pasture management decisions more sustainably.