Region: East Asia/Pacific
Hen-biau
King
Chair: The East Asia/Pacific Regional LTER Coordinating Committee
and the Taiwan Forestry Research Network
In 1993 an All Scientists Meeting was held at Estes Park, Colorado in the United States and was hosted by the U.S. Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. The meeting focused on establishing linkages with existing and developing long term research programs around the world. An International LTER (ILTER) network was then proposed. An International LTER Coordinating Committee was also established to achieve wider regional representation. The First ILTER Annual meeting was held in Rothamstad, United Kingdom in August 1994 and an ILTER Coordinating Committee was concurrently formed. A series of follow-up action plans has occurred ever since.
In realizing the importance, necessity and benefits of a multi-disciplinary, integrated and long term research network in ecology at the regional scale, an East Asia-Pacific Regional LTER Coordinating Committee was established in 1995. The committee currently consists of 12 members, each representing one to several LTER sites across the region with wide ranges of climatic regimes and geographic features, vegetation types, and others such as cultures, etc. There are six formal LTER Networks with 42 LTER sites in the East Asia-Pacific region.
The Australia LTER Network has four LTER sites that have wide ranges of climatic regimes and diverse biomes. They range from rainforest with 3600mm annual rainfall to open forest with 700mm of annual rainfall.
The Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN) was launched in 1988. It serves as a base for the LTER and monitoring activities. Twenty-nine stations were selected with 16 agriculture, 7 forestry, 2 grassland, 1 lake and 1 estuarine ecosystems. The CERN was designed to integrate the stations by adopting common core research areas, standardizing methods, data management, and monitoring, etc. Its major programs are “Mechanisms of Formation and Sustainability of Ecosystem Productivity”, “Water Cycle and Geographic Pattern Studies of Agricultural Ecosystems in Northern China” and “Interaction between Agro-ecosystems and Global Change.”
A Working Group on LTER in the Ecological Society of Japan was established in 1998. Discussions were held to promote Japanese LTER and international correspondence. The Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture (MESSC) of Japan has planned to establish an institute for global environmental studies, which includes field stations for LTER and networking. Japanese ecologists are actively participating in regional as well as international LTER Network activities. They hosted the Second East Asia-Pacific Regional LTER Meeting in 1997. Junior scientists from Japan, Korea and Taiwan have joined the US-East Asian Reciprocal Visiting Programs.
In June 1998, the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and the National University of Mongolia sponsored an LTER workshop. The Mongolian LTER program was then formally established. Lake Hovsgol in Hovsgol National Park was selected as the first LTER site in the summer of 1999. A water quality monitoring program and a database management system for data were established. Russian land-cover resource maps (1947) were digitized. A GIS for Hovsgol National Park was developed. Land cover changes are being studied. In 2000 the Mongolia LTER hopes to begin a forest and lake monitoring program that will study the impacts of deforestation, grazing, and climate changes on the biodiversity of the watershed and lake.
After several years of discussing, reviewing and conducting LTER workshops and hosting international and regional LTER meetings, the Korea LTER (KLTER) Network was established with 3 LTER sites in 1999. These sites include an old growth forest that is over 500 years old. One of the many contributions KLTER made to regional LTER Network development was to host the Third East Asia-Pacific Regional LTER Meeting in 1999.
The Philippines has one candidate candidate LTER site (Mt. Kitanglad Range National Park) which was established in 1997. The program focuses on inventory of flora and fauna for biodiversity, monitoring and managing watersheds, and conserving upland resources. There are three sites, namely Irawan, Bicol, and Manila Bay, to be evaluated for possible future LTER sites.
The Taiwan Ecological Research Network (TERN) was established in 1992 with one LTER site. It has grown into 5 LTER sites. These sites were new sites and were specifically established for the LTER. The National Park Division of Taiwan is current developing six additional LTER sites, one for each national park. TERN hosted the First Regional LTER Meeting in 1995 and the 1997 international LTER meeting. The TERN scientists have actively conducted collaborative research projects with US LTER scientists and the sites have hosted overseas students for their ecological studies.
Others countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, have expressed intense interest in developing national networks of LTER sites. These countries have not yet formally established LTER networks, but they do conduct ecological research at permanent plots and have established new plots for long term research. For example, Indonesian ecologists have continuously carried out periodical inventory of trees and undergrowth species in existing permanent plots. They also established new permanent plots at 1997 forest fire burn sites to study the effects of fires on long term ecological processes. These four countries have representatives actively participating in the International and the East Asia-Pacific regional LTER activities.
The major and regular activities of the East Asia-Pacific Regional LTER Coordinating committee include calling for biannual committee meetings; holding scientific conferences, symposia, workshops, and conducting reciprocal visiting programs and most importantly, coordinating collaborative LTER research projects across the region. A total of three biannual regional LTER meetings were held since the establishment of the regional LTER committee in 1995. They were in Taipei (1995), Tsukuba (1997) and Seoul (1999) and the fourth will be held in Mongolia in 2001. Many other relevant LTER symposia were held in this region including International LTER Meetings (at Taipei in 1997), international workshops (for example, Information Management at Beijing in 1995, Networking at Taipei in 1995, LTER and Biodiversity Conservation at Seoul in 1998, and the LTER Conference at Ulaanbataar in 1998 etc.). Numerous domestic LTER meetings also have been held in most countries in the region since 1995.
A regional collaborative research project, Comparison of Litter Decomposition among LTER Sites across the Region, was proposed and endorsed during the Third East Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting, Seoul during October 1999 and the detailed proposal and protocol are under preparation by the Regional Coordinating Committee. The project is scheduled to commence in the summer of 2001.
Future activities that have been recommended by the East Asia-Pacific Regional LTER committee are:
1. Co-organizing biannual LTER Coordinating Committee Meetings;
2. Promoting LTER program in countries that have no formal LTER sites yet but are interested in developing such programs;
3. Initiating and conducting more collaborative research projects across the regional LTER sites;
4. Producing a regional directory of long term ecological research sites;
5. Sharing the values and results of long term ecological research with resource managers and policy makers;
6. Incorporating results and findings from long term ecological research into curricula at all levels of educational organizations; and
7. Adopting programs and action plans made by the International LTER Coordinating Committee, particularly important plans for participating in the NPP demonstration project of the Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS).
Reviewing the progress that the regional LTER networks have made, it is reassuring that the Long Term Ecological Research programs have been accepted by science communities and funding agencies within the East Asia-Pacific region.
The East Asia-Pacific Region already has and will have impacts on global scale processes. For example, a few decades ago, the contribution of this region to global nutrient fluxes was small relative to other areas of the world. Now they have become, in some cases, major components of the global cycle. The East Asia-Pacific Regional LTER networks should thus establish linkages with other regional LTER networks and global programs that focus on ecological research and monitoring. The East Asia-Pacific region is a “big player” in global modeling of any large-scale issues. The need for data, particularly long term data, is critical. The knowledge of the patterns of population, development, biodiversity, etc. in Asia is very important in dealing with global effects of pollution, climate change, deforestation, land use and many other issues.