Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia & New York, USA.
Sci Rep. 2020 Feb 19;10(1):2989. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-59969-2.
Most large herbivores in arid landscapes need to drink which constrains their movements and makes them vulnerable to disturbance. Asiatic wild ass or khulan (Equus hemionus) were widespread and abundant throughout the arid landscapes of Central Asia and Mongolia, but have undergone dramatic population declines and range constrictions; denying khulan access to water is believed to have played a major role. Mongolia's South Gobi Region now houses the world largest remaining khulan population, but is undergoing rapid land use changes. Khulan water use is poorly understood, largely due to the difficulty of mapping waterpoints used by khulan throughout their exceptionally large ranges, prone to high variations in precipitation. We used the special movement path characteristics of GPS tagged khulan to show us where water is located. We identified 367 waterpoints, 53 of which were of population importance, characterized the seasonal and circadian use, and identified snow cover as the most important variable predicting khulan visits during the non-growing season, and vegetation greenness during the growing season. Our results provide a data layer to help guide a regional khulan conservation strategy, allow predictions for other part of the global khulan range, and illustrates the overall importance of waterpoints for dryland herbivores.
大多数干旱地区的大型食草动物都需要饮水，这限制了它们的活动范围，使它们容易受到干扰。亚洲野驴或蒙古野驴（Equus hemionus）曾广泛分布于中亚和蒙古的干旱地区，但它们的数量已经大幅减少，分布范围也受到限制；人们认为，不让野驴喝水是导致它们数量减少的主要原因。蒙古的南戈壁地区现在是世界上剩余野驴数量最多的地区，但这里正在经历快速的土地利用变化。野驴的用水情况了解甚少，主要是因为难以绘制它们在异常广阔的范围内使用的水源点地图，而且这些水源点容易受到降水变化的影响。我们利用 GPS 标记野驴的特殊移动路径特征来确定水源的位置。我们确定了 367 个水源点，其中 53 个对野驴种群很重要，我们还描述了季节性和昼夜使用情况，并发现积雪是预测非生长季节野驴活动的最重要变量，而植被绿色度则是预测生长季节野驴活动的最重要变量。我们的研究结果提供了一个数据层，可以帮助指导区域野驴保护策略，还可以对全球其他地区的野驴种群进行预测，并说明了水源对干旱地区食草动物的总体重要性。
