Ancient trees in the rainforest. Hainan Daily reporter Chen Yuancai photographed
■ Hainan Daily reporter Zhou Yueguang
204.513 billion yuan! On September 26 this year, the Chinese Academy of Forestry and the Hainan Academy of Forestry jointly announced the results of the 2019 GEP (Gross Ecosystem Product) accounting results for the Pilot Zone of the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park System. This accounting result was jointly completed by the researchers of the Jianfengling Ecological Station of the Institute of Tropical Forestry of the Chinese Academy of Forestry (hereinafter referred to as the Jianfengling Ecological Station) and the Hainan Academy of Forestry, and the long-term field monitoring data of the Jianfengling Ecological Station provided important support for this.
On September 29, a reporter from Hainan Daily came to Jianfengling and walked into the Jianfengling Ecological Station.
More than 60 years of monitoring history
The earliest monitoring of Jianfengling Ecological Station began in 1957, was built in 1986, and was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 1999 to become a national field station. As the southernmost and most typical ecological monitoring and research platform of tropical forest ecosystems in China, the ecological station adopts a one-stop multi-point layout, mainly carries out data collection and monitoring research on the structural and functional changes of tropical forest ecosystems, and explores and reveals the composition, structure and function changes of tropical forest ecosystems and their response and adaptation mechanisms to climate change.
"The country is paying more and more attention to ecological monitoring, and for decades, the Jianfengling Ecological Station has gradually moved from the original manual monitoring to information and intelligent monitoring." Lin Mingxian, an engineer at the Jianfengling Ecological Station who has been engaged in ecological monitoring for more than 30 years, recalled that in the 1980s, in the depths of the original forest area of Jianfengling, there was a 47-meter-high climate monitoring tower, and there were people squatting on each layer of the tower, recording data changes such as temperature and wind every two hours.
Provide scientific and technological support for ecological protection
Walking into the Jianfengling Tianchi Ecological Monitoring Area, the reporter saw a white metal box on top of a thick plastic pipe, which read "Atmospheric Negative (Oxygen) Ion Monitoring System", with multiple instruments outside and two thin antennas.
Lin Mingxian said that this is an automated climate and environmental monitoring system, not only monitoring the atmosphere negative (oxygen) ions, but also monitoring air particulate matter (PM2.5), temperature, humidity, wind speed and light radiation, etc., and automatically transmitting various monitoring data wirelessly to the Jianfengling Ecological Data Management Center, eliminating the need for manual monitoring and manual recording.
In recent years, the Jianfengling Ecological Station has set up auxiliary ecological monitoring points in the areas of Parrot Ridge, Limu Mountain and Maorui Mountain with Jianfengling and Diaoluo Mountain as the monitoring center, systematically improving the ecological positioning and monitoring capabilities of tropical rainforest national parks, gradually improving relevant field experimental observation fields and monitoring facilities and equipment, systematically improving the observation capabilities of various elements such as hydrology, soil, meteorology and biology, establishing an important monitoring and research platform for tropical rainforest national parks, relying on the platform to carry out biodiversity and ecosystem protection and tropical rainforest ecological restoration. Monitoring and patrolling, community co-construction and co-management, science education, talent training and other aspects of scientific research and monitoring work, to provide scientific and technological support for the construction of Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park and sustainable and effective management.
Pinnacle Ridge rangers enter the mountain to patrol. Hainan Daily reporter Chen Yuancai photographed
Establish biodiversity monitoring systems
In order to study the biodiversity of tropical rainforests, the Jianfengling Ecological Station has built two of the world's largest forest "large samples" in the tropical montane rainforest area: 60 hectares of primary forest "large samples" and a 64 hectares of secondary forest "large samples". The researchers investigated and monitored the species name, chest diameter, height, growth and relative coordinates of each plant with a chest diameter of more than 1 cm in the sample field, and hung an aluminum label on it.
Dr. Zhou Zhang, associate researcher of the Chinese Academy of Forestry and Jianfengling Ecological Station, said that the establishment of "large sample land" provides a very good research site for further exploring the community characteristics, spatial distribution patterns of species, and coexistence mechanisms of species diversity in tropical rainforests.
It is understood that since 1983, the Jianfengling Ecological Monitoring Station has set up 50 fixed sample plots and 164 km grid samples, covering 16,000 hectares of tropical rainforest in the hinterland of Jianfengling, and establishing a regional forest biodiversity monitoring system from point to surface.
The concentrated distribution area of tropical rainforest in Hainan is the source of the main rivers and important water conservation areas of Hainan Island, and is the commanding height and balance point of ecological security in Hainan. Zhou Zhang said that in the context of carbon neutrality, the Jianfengling Ecological Station will conduct in-depth research from the construction of the carbon sink monitoring network of tropical forests in Hainan, the dynamics of carbon sink changes in tropical forests under the background of climate change and its driving mechanism, etc., so as to explore possible ways to enhance the potential of carbon sinks in tropical forests and provide a strong guarantee for improving the carbon neutrality capacity of tropical rainforest national parks.
(Hainan Daily, September 30)