23
May 2008 - By research professor Anthony
D. Fox, tfo@dmu.dk
The Lesser White-fronted
Goose is one of the fastest foraging herbivores
on the planet, plucking grass at a rate
of up to 5 pecks per second. This was only
one of many lessons learned by enthusiastic
Chinese scientists and students when NERI-professor
Tony Fox held two waterfowl ecology courses
in China at some of China's finest nature
reserves.
The wind blowing through
the valley of the mighty River Yangtze can
be very cold in February, but the same could
not be said for the warmth of my welcoming
hosts.
For almost three weeks,
I was the guest of Cao Lei, Associate Professor
at the School of Life Sciences, University
of Science and Technology of China (USTC)
based at Hefei in Anhui Province. USTC is
an elite research centre created by the
Chinese Academy of Sciences which moved
to Hefei during the Cultural Revolution
and is regarded as one of the most prestigious
Universities in China.
Cao Lei undertook her
Ph.D. on Red-faced Boobies, a Pacific Ocean
relative of the Gannet, but has in recent
years been collating mid-winter waterbird
counts for all of China and is currently
constructing a research group to develop
her programme of research and monitoring.
Staff traning course
My reason for travelling to China was to
support a major training initiative for
her group and for a selected group of second-year
undergraduates. We had planned an intensive
one week field induction programme for her
new and enthusiastic team of 3 masters students,
a Ph.D and a post doc, none of whom had
worked with waterbirds previously.
As our base, we had
chosen East Dongting Hu, a seasonally flooded
wetland extending to 1,200 km2 consisting
of vast areas of shallow freshwater lakes,
marshes and seasonally inundated sedge meadows
in the middle reaches of Yangtze river near
the city of Yueyang. Water levels in the
lake system rise and fall with those in
the Yangtze River to the north, fluctuating
up to an amazing 17.8 m each year between
the very high summer monsoon levels and
the low level in winter, when huge numbers
of waterbirds gather at the site to feed
in the shallow waters and lakes.
The climate is subtropical
monsoon, with an annual rainfall of 1.2-1.5
m per annum and mean annual temperature
of 17°C, but whilst I was there, it
was bitterly cold with typical winter sub-zero
temperatures. The wetlands teem with many
tens of thousands of waterbirds, including
cranes, swans, geese, ducks and grebes,
several of them globally rare or endangered
or occurring in internationally important
numbers. As a result, the site is a Ramsar
wetland of international importance and
one of the jewels in the crown of China’s
network of National Nature Reserves.
Most notable are the
Lesser White-fronted Geese, because Dongting
Hu supports up to 16,000 of a total world
population of some 20,000 birds, making
this site unique on the whole planet for
this rare and declining goose species.
They proved to be a
superb study animal, relatively approachable
and present in large numbers, enabling us
to easily identify first winter birds, hatched
last summer (and identifiable by the reduced
white on the face and lack of black belly
bars) from the older birds.
In this way we were
able to give the students confidence in
working out the percentage of young birds
in the flock and identify family size, two
important demographic parameters that will
be important for monitoring the reasons
for population change in the future.
We were also able to
train the students in gathering data on
peck rate and step rate (both measures of
feeding efficiency that can be used to contrast
the attractiveness of different habitats).
The Lesser White-fronted
Goose is one of the fastest foraging herbivores
on the planet, plucking grass at a rate
of up to 5 pecks per second, so it is only
possible to follow this remarkable harvesting
rate by watching the action on slowed-down
video tapes in the evening after a day in
the field!
In contrast, the students
had to get used to the mind-numbing boredom
of following a goose’s bottom to see how
often a faecal pellet or dropping emerges!
This ends up being an infuriating pastime,
as your focal bird disappears behind a tussock
and other birds or decides to fly off, causing
abandonment and to start again with another
bird.
The dropping frequency
statistic is important, as we also showed
how collection of droppings enabled an assessment
of their diet, digestive efficiency and
overall energy intake rate, vital knowledge
if we are to manage the vegetation that
feed upon in the way that suits the geese
best.
After seven intensive
days, the incredibly motivated and enthusiastic
band of students had grasped all the concepts,
were highly adept at applying all the new
techniques and were very confident and rightly
happy with all that they had achieved.
Despite long days in
the field and the often arduous conditions,
we also had a huge amount of fun, as well
as being welcomed warmly by the staff of
the Nature Reserve who were delighted to
have this extra capacity building to add
to their own research and monitoring at
their wetland site.
Vital for China's future
Such monitoring and research is vital. Not
only are the wetlands threatened by drought
and the changes in water level and seasonality
that the gigantic Three Gorges Dam will
cause, but the wetlands themselves support
20,000 fishermen that live in the immediate
area and another 180,000 people live in
the immediate vicinity, many of whom are
dependent on the productive ecosystem of
the lake for their livelihoods.
Many graze cattle or
cut vegetation for firewood, construction
purposes or as food for fish farms, all
of which affect the wetlands and the birds.
It is therefore vital that these links are
made to ensure that as much as possible,
human exploitation of the wetlands are sustainable,
and compatible with maintaining and hopefully
increasing local waterbird abundance.
Undergraduate course
The second phase of the training programme
involved organising a fieldcourse for 20
2nd year undergraduates.
There is little tradition
of field ecology in China, although things
are improving fast, and part of the problem
is that few students get to experience wetland
ecosystems and the spectacular numbers of
organisms that they support.
In order to begin to
enthuse the next generation of graduate
students, Cao Lei has raised funding to
support the costs of transport to and accommodation
at Shengjin Hu (a very important wetland
and National Nature Reserve complex 2 hours
drive from the University at Hefei) for
the students, and so they joined with the
research team of masters and PhD students,
the post doc and trainers for an intensive
3 day work camp.
More emphasis was placed
on simple species identification, helping
the students to understand how different
waterbirds exploit different habitats and
helping them master counting techniques
when birds may occur in mixed flocks of
many thousands of individuals. However,
the students again proved themselves extremely
able, enthusiastic and quick to learn, so
we quickly continued to show them many of
the simple techniques for studying population
processes, behaviour and feeding ecology
that we had covered in the first sessions
with the graduate students.
Swan Geese fouraging
in the morning haze.
Shengjin Hu is important
for its wintering Swan Geese another globally
vulnerable goose species which winters largely
in the Yangtze river flood plain. It is
a giant of a goose, and digs comically in
the soft mud of the receding lake for the
black underground tubers of a freshwater
eel grass Vallesneria.
These tubers are really
tasty but difficult to find in the soft
sticky mud, so the students put on their
rubber chest waders and we all went out
into the soft stick mud to try and dig them
up to see what they were eating. In concert
with detailed studies of the geese when
feeding to see how fast they found the tubers,
the students later analysed the food value
of the tubers to see how nutritious these
little snacks are, so as to better understand
their dietary and habitat requirements.
Huge challenges
The two training course were a huge success,
not just for the amount of information passed
on to the students, but for the incredible
enthusiasm and commitment of the students
themselves.
After a whole day in
the rain and cold, they were still keen
to continue working until darkness fell
and as well as acquiring a set of new skills,
there was clear joy at experiencing the
delights of some of China’s foremost wetlands
and the waterbird spectaculars that they
support.
They will certainly
need their enthusiasm and skills in the
years to come. China’s annual GDP has increased
at 9.6% per annum over the last 27 years,
far surpassing all other economies on the
planet. Despite the one child policy in
urban areas, thought to have avoided 400
million births since its inception in 1979,
the population is still increasing.
These factors in concert
with global climate change and all the pressures
common to the rest of the planet put extra
pressures on the natural resources of China,
including her magnificent wetlands and waterbirds.
I hope we may be able
to continue to support Cao Lei and her fledgling
waterbird group at USTC, hopefully by establishing
a memorandum of understanding between our
two universities to enable the exchange
of personnel and students and to continue
the excellent collaboration on training
established during February 2008.
Contact: Research professor Tony Fox
+ More
Projection of emissions
of air pollutants
23 May 2008
This report contains a description of the
models and background data used for projection
of the pollutants SO2, NOX, NMVOC, NH3,
TSP, PM10 and PM2.5 for Denmark . The emissions
are projected to 2030 using basic scenarios
which include the estimated effects on emissions
of policies and measures implemented until
June 2006 (‘with measures’ projections).
The projected emissions are compared to
Denmarks emission ceilings.
Pollutant
SO2
NOX
NMVOC
NH3*
Emission ceiling
55,000
127,000
85,000
69,000
Emission ceilings for Denmark in 2010 (tonnes)
according to EU Directive 2001/81/EC of
the European Parliament and of the Council
of 23 October 2001 on national emission
ceilings for certain atmospheric pollutants.
* The NH3 emission ceiling excludes the
emission from straw treatment and crops.
Pollutant summary
NOX
The projected NOX emission of 135.8 ktonnes
in 2010 is somewhat higher than the emission
ceiling of 127 ktonnes. The three largest
sources are transport (mainly road transport),
energy industries and other mobile sources.
SO2
The Danish SO2 emission ceiling of 55 ktonnes
in 2010 will be achieved according to the
projection, which estimates the emission
in 2010 to 20 ktonnes, approximately 64
% less than the emission ceiling. The largest
source of the emission of SO2 is energy
industries, accounting for 43 % of the SO2
emission in 2010.
NMVOC
The projected NMVOC emission of 88.1 ktonnes
is somewhat higher than the emission ceiling
of 85 ktonnes. The largest emission sources
of NMVOC are use of solvents, transport,
non-industrial combustion plants (mainly
wood combustion in residential plants),
other mobile sources and offshore activities.
NH3
The projected emission in 2010 is estimated
to be 65.5 ktonnes (excluding emissions
from crops), compared with the emission
ceilings of 69 ktonnes. This means that
the Danish NH3 emission is expected to be
5 % below the emission ceiling in 2010.
Almost all emissions of NH3 result from
agricultural activities and the major part
comes from livestock manure.
Particles
Particles are not included under the NEC
directive, so no emission ceilings are established
for TSP, PM10 or PM2.5.
Contacts: Chemical engineer
Ole-Kenneth Nielsen, tel. +45 4630 1819,
okn@dmu.dk
Senior advicer Morten Winther, tel. +45
4630 1297, mwi@dmu.dk
Illerup, J.B., Nielsen,
O-K., Winther, M., Mikkelsen, M.H., Nielsen,
M., Fauser, P. & Gyldenkærne,
