2023-04-03
Recently, “A dataset of ecosystem flux measurements in a shrubland ecosystem of the Mau Us Desert in Yanchi, Ningxia (2012-2016)” from Yanchi Research Station (School of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University) was published. The publication aims to promote the utilization of field measurement data, and to facilitate regional synthesis studies, supporting the modeling of ecosystem processes and functions at varying spatiotemporal scales.
One of the key issues in desertification control is to determine the capacity of vegetation recovery, which is pertinent to the long-term stability of the composition and structure of vegetation and the ecosystem services it provides. Furthermore, both scientific communities and decision makers are concerned about the carbon sequestration potential of desert vegetation under climate change. Long-term in situ measurements of ecosystem processes could provide critical data and knowledge for improving eco-environmental management in desert areas undergoing ecosystem restoration. Such measurements could also help promote forest and grassland carbon sequestration, and thereby contribute to the national strategic roadmap of “carbon neutrality”.
Yanchi Research Station has been focusing closely on both national demands and the cutting-edge of scientific research, and initiated long-term ecosystem measurements and research more than a decade ago. From the summer of 2011, researchers at the station established comprehensive ecosystem carbon, water, and energy measurement systems in representative sand-fixing shrublands. The systems have measured more than 200 variables, including eddy-covariance fluxes, soil surface CO2 effluxes, micro-meteorological variables, groundwater table, plant sap-flow velocities, photosynthetic gas exchanges, and chlorophyll fluorescence parameters. A research team led by Prof. Tianshan Zha and Prof. Xin Jia has been responsible for instrument maintenance, data management, and post-processing. Over the past 12 years, the research team has obtained about 1 TB of raw data. Multiple data products have been developed from the raw data, including ecosystem productivity, carbon balance, water balance, evapotranspiration and its partitioning as well as plant and ecosystem resource use efficiencies.
The team of Yanchi Research Station provided technical training to ChinaFLUX in 2019. The long-term data measured at the Station has greatly supported the evaluation of ecosystem services by forestry departments and the National Nature Reserve, and has played an essential role in the research work by team members. Supported by these long-term measurements, researchers at the Station have obtained more than 10 grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and have published more than 70 papers in Journal of Ecology, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Plant and Soil, Biogeosciences, Ecosystems, Catena, SCIENTIA SILVAE SINICAE, and Chinese Journal of Plant Ecology. These studies have drawn the attention from both domestic and international research communities. Long-term measurements at the Yanchi Research Station have supported more than 30 graduate students and 3 promising young researchers to carry out their researches. Besides, the research team“Desertification Control and Dryland Ecology”, led by Prof. Yuqing Zhang, has recently been awarded as the innovation research team of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.
Paper Link: https://www.plant-ecology.com/CN/10.17521/cjpe.2023.0001
