Gridded livestock density database and spatial trends for Kazakhstan
Kolluru V. John R. Saraf S. Chen J. Hankerson B. Robinson S. Kussainova M. Jain K.
December 2023Nature Research
Scientific Data
2023#10Issue 1
Livestock rearing is a major source of livelihood for food and income in dryland Asia. Increasing livestock density (LSKD) affects ecosystem structure and function, amplifies the effects of climate change, and facilitates disease transmission. Significant knowledge and data gaps regarding their density, spatial distribution, and changes over time exist but have not been explored beyond the county level. This is especially true regarding the unavailability of high-resolution gridded livestock data. Hence, we developed a gridded LSKD database of horses and small ruminants (i.e., sheep & goats) at high-resolution (1 km) for Kazakhstan (KZ) from 2000–2019 using vegetation proxies, climatic, socioeconomic, topographic, and proximity forcing variables through a random forest (RF) regression modeling. We found high-density livestock hotspots in the south-central and southeastern regions, whereas medium-density clusters in the northern and northwestern regions of KZ. Interestingly, population density, proximity to settlements, nighttime lights, and temperature contributed to the efficient downscaling of district-level censuses to gridded estimates. This database will benefit stakeholders, the research community, land managers, and policymakers at regional and national levels.
Text of the article Перейти на текст статьи
Department of Sustainability and Environment, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, 57069, SD, United States
Department of Biology, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, 57069, SD, United States
Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 48823, MI, United States
Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 48823, MI, United States
Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Theodor-Lieser-Str. 2, Halle (Saale), 06120, Germany
Institute for Agricultural Policy and Market Research & Centre for International Development and Environmental Research (ZEU), Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany
Kazakh National Agrarian Research University, AgriTech Hub KazNARU, 8 Abay Avenue, Almaty, 050010, Kazakhstan
Kazakh-German University (DKU), Nazarbaev avenue, 173, Almaty, 050010, Kazakhstan
Department of Sustainability and Environment
Department of Biology
Department of Geography
Center for Global Change and Earth Observations
Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO)
Institute for Agricultural Policy and Market Research & Centre for International Development and Environmental Research (ZEU)
Kazakh National Agrarian Research University
Kazakh-German University (DKU)
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026