Result of study on developing forest seed region in Mongolia

In foreign countries, motor roads and railroads are usually used as borders of forest seed regions. In the case of Mongolia, this method is not suitable in view of the sparse population, large distribution area of forests and the huge territory of the country. Therefore, this study used topographical features to determine the borders of the seed regions. Satellite images in combination with Digital Elevation Model (DEM) make it possible to define rivers, streams and mountain ridges as the borders of forest seed regions. Overall, we identified 19 seed regions for Siberian larch and 12 regions for Scots pine, 9 regions for Siberian pine, 6 regions for Siberian fir and 9 seed regions for Siberian spruce forests. Due to a lack of genetic-selection studies in Mongolia, these proposed forest seed regions can be considered as a preliminary effort with an opportunity to be updated and improved based on more detailed research results. The forest seed regions and maps will play important role as fundamental material for establishing a permanent forest seed supply based on genetic-selection characteristics of the forests in different regions in Mongolia.


INTRODUCTION
The forestry sector in Mongolia is rapidly changing, including reforestation and restoration ARTICLE *corresponding author: bayarsaikhanudval@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0021-9155 The Author(s).2018 Open access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
activities which been broadening in all aspects.Therefore, it is vitally important to establish scientific knowledge and understanding of the hereditary and genetic characteristics of the main forest-forming tree species for certain forest regions to ensure successful reforestation and forest restoration efforts.Hence, it is vital to determine forest seed regions in order to utilize geographic difference in adaptation and productivity of trees in order to grow high productivity forests which can withstand adverse environmental factors.
Several previous researches, including Milyutin et al., (1988) produced preliminary forest seed zoning under the framework of Mongolian-Russian Joint Biological Complex Expeditions conducted in 1981-1990 and they identified 13 seed regions for Siberian larch and 4 seed regions for Scotch pine forests respectively [13].These studies were notable in terms of their significance in improving the quality of reforestation work, enabling experimental research to use seeds from geographically different regions, and establishing permanent seed stands based on the genetic-selection process in each district [17].In addition, the study into internal modification of larch species in eastern Khentii along with research to identify parameters of larch seed quality have helped determined the best regions (forest seed zoning) to transplant seeds across.The joint expeditions also reported that the difference and modification in the morphological characteristics of larch populations were dependent on the growth conditions, and distribution of populations.
What was new about this study was that it was able to determine the larch seed districts in the forest-vegetation zone of Khentii, where Larix sibirica, L. daurica, and L. chekanowskii are present [1,5,6,7,9,10,11,12].
The main objective of this study is to develop the seed region mapping of Mongolia's coniferous forests based on genetic-selection characteristics.For this purpose, we aim to identify seed regions for coniferous trees including Siberian larch (Larix sibirica Ldb.), Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.); Siberian pine (Pinus sibirica Du Tour.), Siberian fir (Abies sibirica Ldb.), and Siberian spruce (Picea obovata Ldb.)

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The basic units of the seed region are the identical genetic origin and growth conditions, which differ from neighboring regions which is representative of a given provenance region in terms of altitude, climate, soil and vegetation characteristics.Local seeds are those that have been collected from forests within the border of the same seed region; and seeds from other regions refer to those that have been collected from other seed regions.The following materials, information and sources are used in developing seed regions and their mapping.
1  and Tourism (MET).These shape files had information on species composition, tree species, and ecological and geographical data of the forest stand and compartments.The digital elevation model, different satellite images, specialized thematic maps and field survey results on soil and vegetation characteristics have been used as additional materials.
A digital elevation model was used with Surpace to define aspects.Spatial overlapping analysis has been conducted to prepare and extract information from specialized maps [3,4,13,14].
Based on the experiences from other countries, motor roads and railroads are usually used as borders of the forest seed regions [16].In the case of Mongolia, this method is not suitable due to the sparse population, large distribution area of forests and the large territory.Therefore, we used topographical features to determine borders of the seed regions.Topographical maps visibly denote the borders using river, stream and mountain ridges as border areas [2,8,15,16].
During the field survey, an inventory of seed stands and studies of vegetation and soil types were conducted, which enabled to produce detailed seed region maps.Digital Elevation Models with 30m resolution and Satellite Images (Google Earth, Landsat) were used in the map processing.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The basic unit of the seed regions is the forest seed region, which is characterized by similar soil and vegetation characteristics, moisture condition, and index of continent to produce a population with similar genetic materials (within the distribution limit of the certain species of tree).
Seeds collected from the plain (steppe) forests can be used for almost all forest regions, however, seeds collected from mountainous regions can only be used within a 200-400 m range from the original altitude.
We identified 19 seed regions for Siberian larch and 12 regions for Scots pine, 9 regions for Siberian pine, 6 regions for Siberian fir and 9 seed regions for Siberian spruce forests.Each seed region is presented with information on possible regions to transfer seeds for transplanting, environment-climate conditions and regional forest characteristics, given in Tables 1-5.
Due to a lack of genetic-selection studies in Mongolia, these proposed forest seed regions can be considered a preliminary effort with the possibility to be updated and improved in the future, based on more detailed research results.These forest seed regions can be used as fundamental material for establishing a permanent forest seed supply, based on genetic-selection characteristics of the forests in different regions in Mongolia.

Table 1 .
Altai Seed regions of Siberian larch forests

Table 3 .
Seed regions of Scotch pine forests

Table 7 .
Seed regions of Siberian fir forests *Source: Meteorological and Environmental Monitoring Agency