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January 12, 2006 Chinese Students Research N.D. Grassland Issues Two Chinese students spent the last six months studying North Dakota’s central grasslands. They also received a crash course in winter on the northern Plains, the American culture and American slang. Danjun Wang and Xubin Pan are students at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Botany in Beijing. They’ve been working with researchers at North Dakota State University’s Central Grasslands Research Extension Center near Streeter as part of their master’s program. Wang researched plant responses to various intensities of livestock grazing. Pan evaluated the economic value of natural resources such as soil, water and vegetation, as well as those less easy to quantify, such as aesthetics, wildlife habitat and clean air. They also visited agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, State Land Department and Natural Resources Conservation Service to learn how they manage grassland. Their Central Grasslands center hosts gave them a sense of North Dakota history through visits to the Heritage Center, state Capitol and Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. The Chinese are interested in how the U.S. manages grasslands because they are struggling to make some changes in the way they handle their grasslands, according to Paul Nyren, Central Grasslands Research Extension Center director. Inner Mongolia, for example, has vast grasslands, but they are fairly heavily grazed. Center researchers, who have conducted grazing intensity trials since 1989, found the amount of grazing can affect plant growth, the survival of plant species, and the ability of rain and snowmelt to soak into the soil instead of running off and causing floods. China’s population of 1.3 billion prevents the country from following the U.S.’s example of creating initiatives such as the Conservation Reserve Program because the Chinese people need the cropland for their livelihood, Nyren says. The CRP pays producers to plant long-term vegetation on marginally usable or highly erodible land to improve water quality, control soil erosion and enhance habitats for waterfowl and wildlife. Research the Chinese students did also is important because China is trying to replant forests that have been depleted, Nyren says. The students came to North Dakota under an agreement that Nyren and the Institute of Botany’s director signed in 2003. The directors pledged the institute and Central Grasslands center would share knowledge, host visiting scholars and work with each other to develop a closer relationship. As a result, two scholars from the institute, ecology professor Shiping Wang and student Guojie Wang, did research at the center in 2004. Guojie Wang returned to the center in June to complete the research he started in 2004 on the effect of grazing on vegetation’s potential for natural regeneration. Now he is working on a Ph.D. at NDSU. Coming to North Dakota was a bit of a cultural shock for the students. “It’s a very different way of life, the way of life Americans live, from the Chinese,” said Danjun Wang, who is from southern China, where the weather is warm all the time. Her hometown has the equivalent of North Dakota’s entire population of about 634,000. Pan also found the North Dakota winter a little hard to take. He comes from southeastern China, where the weather is warm most of the time. He said he’s seen snow in his hometown only once. Pan, who is back in China, said what he’ll miss most about North Dakota is people such as Nyren and Nyren’s wife, Anne, buffalo and pizza. “I think I will miss a feeling, an American spirit, and people’s way of doing things,” said Danjun Wang, who also is back in China. “When they do something, they persist.” She said she’ll also remember their visit to the governor’s office, something they wouldn’t be able to do in China. “It’s been an interesting experience for us because we begin to understand a little better some of the cultural differences,” Paul Nyren said. He’s hoping to continue the good working relationship the center has developed with Chinese scholars by writing a grant proposal for a joint study on carbon sequestration and greenhouse gases at the Central Grasslands center and in Inner Mongolia and Tibet. Carbon sequestration is capturing and storing or reusing greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, to prevent their buildup in the atmosphere. Conducting the same tests in different parts of the world will provide a much broader understanding of the worldwide problem of greenhouse gases than doing the tests in three parts of the same field, he says. ### Source: Paul
Nyren, (701) 424-3606, p.nyren@ndsu.edu
Photo 1: Student Xubin Pan visits Rodney and Karen Schmidt’s North Dakota bison ranch while doing research for his master’s degree at the NDSU Central Grasslands Research Extension Center near Streeter.
Photo 2: Danjun Wang, doing research on North Dakota’s central grasslands, uses a LI-COR meter to measure the photosynthetic rate of native grasses. |
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