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Abstract:
This paper presents an approach for a quantitative analysis of movement patterns of nomadic households based on GPS trajectories. We distributed GPS
loggers to 400 Mongolian herder households who carried them over a 9-month
period, continuously recording position data every 30 minutes. A total of 142 of the resulting trajectories fulfilled our data quality criteria and were considered
during the analysis. Based on this data, we derive summary indicators describing key parameters of the households' mobility including measures of distance
and number of movements as well as shape characteristics of the trajectories. We
conduct an explorative statistical analysis of these summary indicators to investigate patterns in the nomadic mobility. We identify three movement strategies
based on the number of dierent campsite locations and the distances traveled
between campsites. We also compare the results to the existing literature on
the mobility of Mongolian herders. Our findings show that GPS-based studies present a suitable framework to quantitatively analyze different movement
strategies of nomadic herders.
