From November 1st to 3rd, the third annual congress of the International Research Network (IRN) on Cold Forests was held in the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). Themes of the congress focused on dendroecology and fire disturbance, paleo-ecology and paleo-climate, remote sensing of vegetation, climate-vegetation interaction and simulation, forest ecology and management. The congress was organized by Prof. Rui Li from the State Key Laboratory of Fire Science and the School of Earth and Space Sciences of USTC. 34 researchers from China, Canada, France, Finland and Russia shared their interesting presentations during the meeting, and nearly 300 online and offline participants attended the meeting including a large number of graduate students from USTC and the University of Quebec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT).
Opening speeches by Prof. Jian-guo Huang from the CAS-South China Botanical Garden (SCBG) and Prof. Rui Li from USTC, and part of the records for participants
The congress was started at 18:30 on November 1st (Beijing time). At the opening ceremony, Dr. Raphaël Chavardès from UQAT and Dr. Fu Yuyun from USTC briefly explained how the congress will work. Then, Prof. Jianguo Huang and Prof. Rui Li delivered their opening speeches to appreciate all participants and the conference organizing committee, and respectively introduced the themes and purpose of the 2021 Annual Congress, situations of previous annual congresses in 2019 and 2020, and a comprehensive introduction for the history, schools, faculty and staff, and research achievement of the USTC.
On November 1st, Prof. Jianguo Huang shared with all participants the results about the climate change effects on forest growth, structure, and function in addition to productivity and the carbon balance from subtropical to boreal forest ecosystems by applying approaches based on micro-sampling combined with dendroecology and mixed-effects modeling. Afterwards, nine researchers including Dr. Ma Qianqian and Wang Zhou from SCBG, Dr. Guo Xiali from Guangxi University, Dr. Jordan Paillard, Thomas Suranyi and Augustin Feussom Tchemeleu from the University of Montreal presented their research, with subjects covered the dendroecology and fires, paleoecology and modelling.
Part of the records for presentations
On November 2nd, Prof. Rui Li and his team members Dr. Yipu Wang and Dr. Fu Yuyun systematically introduced their advanced research by applying satellite passive microwave remote sensing technology in monitoring vegetation status, estimating gross primary production and evapotranspiration, and forest fire monitoring and fire danger assessment. Subsequently, Prof. Guillaume de Lafontaine, Prof. Maxence Martin, and the other 10 experts reported their interesting findings on remote sensing of vegetation and forest fire, forest ecology etc.
On November 3rd, Prof. Étienne Boucher and Miguel Montoro Girona from UQAT, Dr. Tongxin Hu from the Northeast Forestry University, and other nine researchers shared their latest research on forest ecology, fire and human disturbance, climate effect and interactions among them. After the report, Prof. Yves Bergeron (fellow of the Royal Society of Canada), Jianguo Huang, Rui Li, and Dr. Raphaël Chavardès discussed the preparation for the next annual congress on 2022. They decided to hold it on Finland and agreed to select Prof. Tuomas Aakala from the University of Eastern Finland as a new co-leader of the IRN on Cold Forests.
This annual congress provides a great opportunity for scientists around the world to share their researches, opinions, and ideas with each other about study on boreal forest ecosystem, which greatly enhanced the cooperation between research groups from different countries.
