“Comprehensively Governing Ecosystems of Poyang Lake Basin (CGE)” was launched in Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research on 1st February of 2007. Relative leaders from international department of MOST, from international cooperation bureau of CAS and from science and technology department of Jiangxi province joined the CGE launch. The leader from MOST highly praised the rapid progress in the CGE project and informed that MOST will issue a special policy to support this kind of international cooperation. The leader from CAS declared that CAS has worked out policies for supporting international cooperation projects and this kind of projects will be one major subject in the agenda of the annual CAS congress held in March 2007. The leader from science and technology department of Jiangxi province stated that Jiangxi government has funded one million RMB for supporting the CGE implementation.
It is the first time to comparatively study Poyang Lake Basin in China and Danube Watershed in Europe. Solutions might be found for a series of scientific and technical problems of integrated ecosystem assessment of Poyang Lake Basin by understanding DANUBIA framework and regional climate model at very high spatial resolution (REMO).
1. Poyang Lake Basin and CGE
Poyang Lake Basin refers to drainage basin of Poyang lake river system. 96.8 % of the drainage basin belongs to Jiangxi province and 3.2% is distributed in Hunan province, Fujian province, Zhejiang province and Anhui province separately. Poyang river system includes Ganjiang river, Wuhe river, Xinjiang river, Xiushui river, Raohe river and Poyanghe river. Irrational human activities in recent decades have caused many ecological problems. For instances, soil erosion was accelerated; desertification area was expanded continuously; many plant and animal species are degrading and disappearing; lake basin is becoming shallow; and lake area is becoming smaller. Since early 1980s, a project of Mountain-River-Lake Improvement and Development of Jiangxi Province (MRLID) has been carried out in order to realize beneficial ecological cycle and sustainable development.
CGE aims at monitoring and assessing effects of MRLID. Its major objectives include classifying ecosystems, evaluating condition and change trend of the ecosystems and their services in past 20 years, analyzing driving forces of the changes, and simulating scenarios of the ecosystems and their services in future 50 years. CGE is divided into 5 sub-projects that are, 1) Monitoring and Assessing Ecosystems of Poyang Lake Basin, 2) Aquatic Environment and Biodiversity of Poyang Lake, 3) Carbon Cycle of Poyang Lake Basin, 4) Synthetic Database of Poyang Lake Basin, and 5) Comprehensive Management of Poyang Lake Basin.
2. Contributive Research Works from German Partner
Since 2000, German partner has been working on GLOWA-Danube project that aims at development of global change decision support system, DANUBIA. It will help stakeholders in upper Danube watershed to evaluate complex interactions between changing climate, agriculture, population, industry and tourism and their consequences on the regional water cycle, water availability and water related risks. DANUBIA consists of interacting models for a large range of natural and societal processes, including meteorology, hydrology, hydrogeology, plant physiology, growth and yield, agricultural economics, households and industrial water demand, demography and tourism. DANUBIA would contribute to comprehensively governing ecosystems of Poyang Lake Basin methodologically.
High resolution regional climate models (REMO) are nested into the global calculations for the investigation of the impact of potential global climate change on specific regions by Max Planck institute for Meteorology. REMO would be one of essential models for monitoring and assessing ecosystem services and their changes of Poyang Lake Basin.
Principle investigator: Jiyuan Liu, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS.
