Location: Stations--Forest Stations--Ai Laoshan

A brief introduction to Ailaoshan Ecological Station

Established in 1981, Ailaoshan Ecological Station (AES) focuses on the study of structure and functions of sub-tropical forest based on long-term monitoring and research projects . Over the past five years, AES has been successful in maintaining long-term observation of forest micro-climate, forest hydrology and the dynamic of leaf litter etc, with the support from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming Branch of CAS and Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, as well as the help from other institutes and governments.

At the same time, twelve research projects have been carried out at AES including projects from Yunnan Provincial Natural Science Foundation and special research fund from CAS and some Innovation Projects of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (Projects detail attached). Up to now, seven projects have been completed and other five are still in progress. By using the research facilities at AES, four graduate students, including one with master degree, conduct their field study at AES and.

Moreover, AES has received scientists from other countries such as America, Japan, Sweden and Australia etc, for cooperative research. According to the statistics, thirty-eight scientific papers, 5 SCI cited and 20 CSCD cited, have already been published on national and international journals based on the research carried out at AES and one monographic book reviewed the recent works. These publications reported the results of studies on plant community structure and population dynamics, biomass and productivity, forest succession, community structure and population dynamics of bird, nutrient and water cycling, forest micro-climate, mountainous climate and soil ecology etc. They have also systematically described the environment and plant community distribution patterns of the area and will provide fundamental scientific data for further studies on biodiversity maintenance and varied ecological process of subtropical forest.