Collaborative Research: Field course in next-gen forest survey and monitoring in tropical China

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The rapid loss of biological diversity, due in large part to changes in land use related to agriculture and development, has lent a new urgency to efforts to document and understand patterns of biodiversity and the potential impacts of its loss. This project will bring US graduate students, recruited nationally, to tropical China for four weeks where they will work with Asian graduate students, recruited from the many tropical countries in the region, to study issues of forest management and restoration and to learn protocols for rapid biological surveys using cutting-edge technologies. The course will be based at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, a well-established research institute in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This project will substantially increase our knowledge of the biological diversity of the forests of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China, which are home to a unique complement of species and which are under severe pressure from expanding plantation forests. Several experimental trials have been established to develop environmentally-friendly mixed agro-forestry management systems and to promote the restoration of natural forest on degraded and unproductive sites. Digital imagery, audio, and web-based sharing technologies will be used to study forest biodiversity, from micro- to macro-scopic scales, and environmental samples will be collected for analysis using next-generation gene sequencing methods. This project will contribute to the training of the next generation of experts in the field of biodiversity and it will pioneer survey methods based on commonly available equipment to accelerate the collection and distribution of meaningful data about forest condition. The resulting protocols will be freely available and actively updated and improved. The course will focus on the development of international collaboration skills, and continued interaction among participants will be encouraged through a 'distributed discussion' course to be offered in the following fall. Beyond the topic of forest restoration, the course will allow students to learn best practices for live web-based interaction and cooperation.This project is jointly supported by the Dimensions of Biodiversity program and the Office of International Science and Engineering.