This autumn, we were honored to have Professor Iain Colin Prentice (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/c.prentice) and Professor Sandra Patricia Harrison (https://research.reading.ac.uk/palaeoclimate/) in our lab and work with us, as part of ongoing Chinese High End Expert Program. During this time, three students in our lab have worked closely with Colin and Sandy and made great progress on their researches.
- Shengchao Qiao’ project is to predict crop traits and grain yield with China crop data at eight stations, based on ecological optimality productivity model (the P model: http://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-017-0006-8).
- Huiying Xu focuses on the impact of elevation on leaf economic spectrum traits, using the data we collected along a transect up Gongga Mountain, Sichuan in July 2018. Except the empirical relationships, she also tried to predict these traits with climate data using optimality-based models.
- Yuechen Chu is working on the analysis of plant morphometric traits, specifically relating morphometric traits to the environmental conditions, which utilizes the first extensive database of plant traits across various sites in China that we have been putting together over the past 10 years and published on Ecology in 2018 (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.871819).
With the huge support and timely advice from Colin, Sandy and Dr. Han Wang, we all pushed our work to the next level and achieved a lot on other aspects as well. Their logical and sharp minds can always show us a new direction when the road we took seemed like a dead end. They not only taught us how to work as a good scientist but also how to live as a good person. It’s a great opportunity for us to work with Colin and Sandy. Thanks to our PI, Dr. Han Wang, and to our department, DESS.
