CAS Key Lab of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes (TEL) was founded in May, 2004, and evaluated in October, 2008, and then reassessed in July, 2009, as one of CAS key laboratories. It aims to study the environmental changes on the Tibetan plateau and their influences on global changes. Study of TEL particularly evolves around the environmental variation features and mechanism on the Tibetan plateau, land surface changes and its impacts on neighboring regions, response of the plateau to monsoonal variation, global warming and intensifying human activities, etc. Understanding of those issues would finally help forecast future environment and land surface changes on the plateau, so as to serve to improve human livelihood on the plateau, or even in the East Asia.

To further encourage academic communication and cooperation in the study of the aforementioned fields, the open fund is established, with two years as its duration and 20,000-30,000 RMB in total as the funding. Such fund will mainly be used to cover:

1.　　　 travel expenditure of the visiting scholar;

2.　　　 test fee for samples done in TEL;

3.　　　 publication fees of papers.

The fund is open for application in Jun 1, with Aug 31, 2010 as the deadline for this year’s application. Final results will be announced in December, 2010.

If you are interested in applying, or want to know more about the fund, please contact Prof. YANG Kun at yangk@itpcas.ac.cn, or Dr. WANG Youqing at yqwang@itpcas.ac.cn.