Location: Stations--Agricultural Stations--Ying Tan Yingtan Ecological Experimental Station of Red Soil, Chinese Academy of Sciences

1. Name of station: Yingtan Ecological Experimental Station of Red Soil, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Red Soil Station for short)

2. History:

Affiliated to the Institute of Soil Science, CAS, Yingtan Station was established in December 1985, accepted to be key station of Chinese Ecological Research Network(CERN ) in 1989, and was approved to become an open station by CAS in 1990. Yingtan Station is presently an important research base for permanent and comprehensive experimentation on red soil ecosystem.

3.Natural conditions: The red soil region in Southeastern (south to the Yandtze River and east to the Yungui plateau) covers an area of 1.13 million km2, accounting for 11.8% of the total area of China. It lies in the tropical and subtropical monsoon region,. Abundant resources of light, temperature and water make this region an important base for the development of agriculture and economy in China.

Red Soil Station is located at Liujiazhan, Yujiang County, Yingtan city, Jiangxi Province (116?2303and 28?2303, altitude 45 m a.s.l),135 km away from Nanchang city and 13 km away from Yingtan city. The Station has a typical and subtropical moist climate, with an annual rainfall of 1785 mm, an annual mean air temperature of 17.8 , an annual accumulative temperature (>10 ) of 5528 , and 262 days free of frost. The main soil is slightly eroded barren land with sparse mason pine (Pinus massoniana L.) derived from Quaternary Red Clay. The vegetations is sparse mason pine (Pinus massoniana L.) and wild grasses, such as centipedegrass (Ere- mochloa ophiuroides ( Munro) Hack), tufted love-grass( Eragrostis psuch ilosa (L.) Beauv.), and needle-grass (mperata cylindrical (L.) Beauv. Var. major Hubb.) etc. before the station established. Double-rice is main crop in the paddy field and peanuts for upland in the local farms. Its environment is typical for the hilly region of red soil in Subtropical China, and suitable for research of this kind of ecosystem on experimental biology. Moreover, The Station covers 106 ha of land and 6 ha of water body, which are used for fuel forests, tea plantation, citrus orchards, pasture lands, pig farm, fish ponds, paddy fields, uplands, etc.. and possesses a comprehensive building of 3000 m2 including administration and guest offices, which are provided with computer, workstation and internet, and Laboratory building composed of soil Physical-Chemical Analysis Lab., Microbial incubation Lab., Simulated Environment for Material-Cycling Lab equipped with precision instruments such as Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer, Graphite Stove- Flame Spectrometer, Infrared Gas Analyzer, UV-Visible Spectrometer, Leaf Area Meter, Global Positioner, TDR Soil Moisture Meter, and field facilities such as Meteorological observatory, Nutrient Lysimeter Moisture Evapotranspiration Meter and Runoff plots.

4. Long-term objectives: Long term objective of the station is to create an excellent base, which is equipped with advanced instruments, comfortable living facilities, and prompt communication, for studying red soil ecosystem, monitoring soil and environmental change, integrating advanced agricultural technology and demonstrating optimum ecological models, and training excellent talent scientists.

5.Tasks The Station focuses its research on the study of the structure, function, evolution and productivity of red soil ecosystem comprehensively, the characteristics of material cycling and energy conversion between the red soil and its environment, the development of optimal ecological models of high efficiency, good quality and low consumption. The objectives are to provide scientific basis and approaches for integrated development and management of red soil, make full use of their productive potentialities, and carry out demonstration activities. The research scope covers the disciplines of soil, plant, animal, microorganism, and environment protection etc. The ecosystem studied can be divided into such subsystems as woodland and grassland subsystem, orchard subsystem, farmland subsystem, water body subsystem, mixed subsystem of the above etc.

The current main tasks are to study evolution of red soil ecosystem and its regulation, soil quality evolution mechanism and sustainable use in subtropical China, to monitor environmental change, including soil, water, biology and atmosphere in red soil region, to put forward and demonstrate optimum ecological models in red soil region, to train excellent talent scientists. to provide the excellent base for researches on ecosystem of red soil.

6. Datasets Monitoring Data collection are divided into four types in the station, which included weather, moisture, soil and biology. Accumulated data are 400 data documents totally about 130Mb. The Meteorological observatory was built in 1989. Until 1998 data have been observed by manpower and automatism.Weather data have been observed with the automatism observation system eguipped by CERN after 1998. Now , the station have accumulated weather data nearly 80Mb. Data of moisture, soil and biology has been collected by means of field observation combined analysis in the lab since 1985, the data collections is nearly 50Mb.

Mr. Chen Benhua(associatt Prof.) is in charge of data collection ,

Mr. Zhoujing(associate Prof.) for dataset inspection, and Mrs Shi Xiaori(Associate Prof.) for data management.

1) Weather datasets (1)The observation set of eradiation station The types of data include wind direction, wind speed, the earth s surface temperature, eradiation (net eradiation, infrared eradiation, the efficient photosynthesis eradiation, ultraviolet eradiation, the total eradiation, echo-eradiation), relative humidity, the temperature of dry and wet ball, the atmosphere pressure (the frequency of the data collection: 1 hypo-hour), water surface evaporation (1 hypo-day). They comprise of documents as follows: YTAdt199701.dat-YTAdt199712.dat YTAdt199801.dat-YTAdt199812.dat YTAdt199901.dat-YTAdt199912.dat YTAdt200001.dat-YTAdt200012.dat YTAdt200101.dat-YTAdt200112.dat YTAdt200201.dat-YTAdt200212.dat

2) The observation set of field microclimate The types of data include wind direction, wind speed (4 floors), relative humidity (4 floors), eradiation (net eradiation, infrared eradiation, the efficient photosynthesis eradiation, ultraviolet eradiation, the total eradiation, echo-eradiation), the earth s surface temperature, soil temperature (7 floors), soil heat flux (the observation frequency: 1 hypo-hour), ect., and amount to 23. They comprise of documents as follows: YTAa199701.dat-YTAa199712.dat YTAa199801.dat-YTAa199812.dat YTAa199901.dat-YTAa199912.dat YTAa200001.dat-YTAa200012.dat YTAa200101.dat-YTAa200112.dat YTAa200201.dat-YTAa200212.dat

3) The observation set of field microclimate The types of data include wind direction, wind speed (4 floors), relative humidity (4 floors), eradiation (net eradiation, infrared eradiation, the efficient photosynthesis eradiation, ultraviolet eradiation, the total eradiation, echo-eradiation), the earth s surface temperature, soil temperature (7 floors), soil heat flux (the observation frequency: 1 hypo-hour), ect., and amount to 23. They comprise of documents as follows: YTAb199701.dat-YTAb199712.dat YTAb199801.dat-YTAb199812.dat YTAb199901.dat-YTAb199912.dat YTAb200001.dat-YTAb200012.dat YTAb200101.dat-YTAb200112.dat YTAb200201.dat-YTAb200212.dat Notes: YTA in the files denotes name of the Station, 'dt' for weather eradiation data; 'a' for field weather station data; 'b' for forest weather station data; the latter figure for year and month of data; the suffixal 'dat' of file shows file formats). 2) Soil datasets The sets of soil data are about 10Mb, include soil nutrient outputs of soil types, different slope gradients and position, different using fashion. Detailed items of the sets are total nitrogen, organic matter, total phosphorus, total potassium, pH, cation exchange capacity, exchange calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium, rapidly available phosphorus, rapidly available potassium, water-soluble nitrogen (alkali), slow available potassium, soil mineral total analysis, soil heavy metal, microelement, soil constitutes. According to following results, several nutrient charts are protracted. Especially, since ecological station came into CERN in 1998, it has been deploying soil orientation observation work according to the uniform deploy from CERN. Soil samples are annually or per growth season sampled in the integrated observation field, paddy field and upland field in the station. Rapidly available microelements, water-soluble nitrogen (alkali), available phosphorus, rapidly available potassium , percent organic, ammonium nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, mineral total analysis, soil constitutes. There have been accumulated historical data that have the characteristics of soil dynamic development and delegate main agroecosystem types in subtropical hillock red soil areas. They comprise of documents as follows: YTAsoil1998.xls, YTAsoil1999.xls, YTAsoil2000 xls, YTAsoil2001. xls

4)Moisture datasets The sets of moisture data are about 26Mb, including: Soil moisture monitored by tensiometer and neutron: Since 1985 the station has been monitoring soil moisture by tensiometer fixed under different utilized fashion (included forest field, grassland and cropland), and accumulated about 15Mb. Run-off data: Since 1992 the station has been monitoring surface run-off and sediments in different landuse systems (arbor-shrub-grass and different combination, cropland), and collected data about 4Mb. Soil evaporation and leakage data: Since 1998 the station has monitoring soil evaporation, leakage and run-off of original soil column by evaporating lysimeter, and collected data about 4Mb. Soil leakage data: Since 1987 the station has been monitoring soil temperature, moisture and leachate elements of original soil column derived from 6 types of mother material, and collected data about 3Mb. They comprise of documents as follows: YTA tensiometer 1992.xls- YTA tensiometer2001xls, YTAneutron1992.xls-neutronYTA2001 YTArunoff1992.xls - YTArunoff2001.xls YTA evaporation1998.xls, YTA evaporation1999.xls, YTA evaporation2000.xls,YTA evaporation2001 YTAleachate1987.xls - YTAleachate2001.xls 4)Biology datasets The sets of biology data are about 8Mb, including: Biology properties and biomass of rice, peanut, sweet potato, etc. and their fertilizers application, Content of microelements and macroelements(total N, P, K, Ca, Mg, Na, ect.) in the plants. They comprise of documents as follows: YTApeanut1998. xls, YTApeanut1999.xls , YTApeanut2000. xls , YTApeanut2001 .xls YTArice1998.xls, YTArice1999.xls, YTArice2000.xls, YTArice2001.xls