The Hakubi Project

Understanding long-term ecosystem dynamics over millions of years has been a major topic of forest ecology. A widely-accepted ecosystem model predicts that progressive leaching of phosphorus, an essential nutrient for photosynthesis, from forests to rivers leads to the strong phosphorus starvation of plants growing on ancient soils. This suggests that forests cannot maintain their biomass and productivity in the long-term, and eventually crush due to the phosphorus depletion. However, although most soils in the tropics are old and contain a low amount of phosphorus, tropical forests maintain extremely large biomass and high productivity. We hypothesized that tree adaptation alleviates negative impacts of phosphorus starvation and changes long-term ecosystem dynamics (i.e., maintaining forest biomass and productivity), and tested this hypothesis using a large network of forest monitoring in the tropics.

In this seminar, I briefly talk about the natural history of tropical forests, describe fieldwork deep inside the forest, and introduce a recent progress of our understanding of this outstanding ecosystem. 
 

Opening talk
"From Paris to Kucha: a long-term fieldwork at the foot of Tianshan (China). "

• Speaker： Associate Professor CHING, Chao-jung (12th, Institute for Research in Humanities)
• Presentation Language：English

Summary

In this opening talk, I will present my fieldwork around the Tarim Basin since my doctoral program in Paris, as well as the publication of the Cave Inscriptions in Ancient Kucha (Shanghai: 2020) as a collective work. In May 2021, it was awarded with the Prix Ikuo Hirayama 2021 by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (AIBL), Institut de France (Paris) with unanimity and enthusiasm. In June 2021, it was selected by the Institute for Intercultural Dialogue on the Silk Roads (Hangzhou, China) as one of the Top 10 Academic Researches in 2020. I am grateful for the Hakubi Research Fund which enabled me to attend the AIBL annual assembly on 26 November 2021 and enhanced my communications with French colleagues.