Invited by Prof. PIAO Shilong, Dr. Yiqi Luo of the Department of Botany and Microbiology, University of Oklahoma, US, visited ITP on December 27, 2012.

During the academic visit, a report was given by Dr. Luo entitled ‘Ecosystem responses and feedback to climate change’. He introduced in the report major research directions in his Ecolab, where scientific staff have long been engaged in experimenting for the responses of ecosystems to climate changes (including warming and precipitation increase). Short-time experiment conducted in his lab was also brief on to acquaint the audience with the study of ecosystem responses to warming. He concluded by emphasizing the importance and necessity of those field experiments to climate modeling/ assessment and theoretic study of the carbon cycle

Note exchanges of Dr. Luo with his audience followed the report, ranging from the understanding of progressive nitrogen limitation and some major drivers of ecosystem changes and relevant modeling, to field observation of alpine forest line microbiology, and to the technical issues with the control experiment for climate changes.

It’s believed that his visit to ITP will initiate a closer cooperation between the Laboratory of Alpine Ecology and Biodiversity and Dr. Luo’s Ecolab in joint studying ecosystem responses to climate changes on the Tibetan Plateau.