Rising Temperature and the Spatiotemporal Patterns of Foot and Mouth Disease of Livestock in Mongolia

Background: Climate change is projected to have cascading effects on the environment and thereby trigger effects on animal health, human health and wellbeing. Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) is a highly contagious disease affecting cloven-hoofed animals that has had dramatic socioeconomic impacts on nomadic pastoralist communities who are increasingly vulnerable to environmental degradation and climate change. FMD outbreaks are occurring more frequently in Mongolia and the effects of climatic change, such as more droughts, increasing temperature, and changing snow fall patterns, are also becoming more obvious. Methods: In this study we use spatiotemporal mapping and regression analyses to explore trends and associations between climate variables and FMD outbreaks across Mongolia from 2010 to 2020. Results: We found that the number of days with temperature above 80 °F in a province in a given year was associated with having a FMD outbreak. None of the other climate variables were associated with FMD outbreaks at the provincial level. Conclusion: Given the projected increase in warming temperatures across Mongolia, there is a need to further explore the association between rising temperatures and FMD outbreaks to prevent FMD from having cascading impacts on nomadic herder communities. Mitigating approaches for herders to use to reduce the impact of rising number of hot days on FMD spread needs to be devised and governments in countries with nomadic herding communities should enact climate adaptation policies for them.