Ecosystems in the global biosphere: Yadvinder Malhi’s lecture series at East China Normal University

This week Yadvinder has been a guest of the East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai, hosted by Dr Fangliang He and colleagues, where he has given a series of lectures including the annual Daxia Lecture in Ecology.

Yadvinder with the Dean of the School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences at ECNU after he had presented the annual Daxia Lecture in Ecology.

The talks discussed various approaches to understanding the role of ecosystems in the global biosphere, ranging from forest monitoring plots through plant traits and ecological energetics.

The lectures were accompanied by discussions with faculty and students on various research topics (below left). Ecosystems lab postdoc Huanyuan Zhang also joined the visit (below right).

After the visit Yadvinder and Huanyuan were shown the forest ecology research site at Tiantong, a warm temperature forest ecosystem. Asia’s warm temperate forests host much higher levels of biodiversity than equivalent latitudes in Europe and North America, fed by monsoonal weather patterns that bring abundant rainfall at latitudes that otherwise would be very arid.

Yadvinder at the forest ecology research site at Tiantong; one of the many ForestGEO plots in China.