Venue: Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanic Garden and Mengsong Nature Reserve in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture

Dates: 20 Nov – 18 Dec 2010

Organiser: Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanic Garden

Registration: http://www.pfs-tropasia.org/

Sponsors: Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Ecological Evolution Lab, Key Lab of Tropical Ecology and Conservation.

Course Fee:1500 US$ (Developed countries), 500 US$ (China).

Fellowships Participants from developing countries (excluding China) will receive fellowships to cover the course fees. Applicants are expected to obtain their own international airfare from their home country to Kunming, China.

About This program is an intensive course in field research methods, research design, sampling and analysis designed for graduate students in Ecology and Conservation. Students will participate in established long term field monitoring experiments and further gain experience in independent project design. With guidance, students will develop and present research proposals and further conduct field based data collection. The course concludes with a symposium, where students present results of course activities amongst their peers and instructors. The course convenes in Kunming, capital city of Yunnan Province. From there we’ll go by bus to Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) where we will stay during the first week of the course. Orientation, Introduction to the Course and a series of lectures will be given during this first week, including a one day course in statistics and use of the statistical program R. Both the long term and independent research projects will take place in Mengsong, a Forest Reserve near the Burma border, which contains magnificent old-growth forest surrounded by different secondary forest types and famous Pu-er tea plantations. We will stay there for two weeks, during which students are expected to set up and carry out their own research projects under supervision of experienced field ecologists. The last week of the course we will be back at XTBG where students can analyse their data and prepare for the presentation of their results during a one day symposium that closes the course.

Topics Tropical Ecology, Eco-Physiology, Taxonomy, Evolutionary Ecology, Plant and Animal Interactions, Biodiversity, Conservation Biology, Invasive Species, Molecular Ecology, Soil Ecology, Plant physiology and more. Further discussions will look at how these topics are affected in human dominated landscapes.