This award supports the U.S. PI, Dr. Dennis Ojima, Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory (NREL) at Colorado State University, the Co-PI, Dr. Jiaguo Qi, Director of the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations at Michigan State University, and thirteen U.S. scientists representing 8 additional universities, to organize an interdisciplinary joint workshop with Chinese counterparts on environmental issues in dryland areas. The Eurasia-USA Workshop on Environmental Issues in Drylands will be held in Urumqi, China, September 14-22, 2007 and lead to advanced understanding of the drivers of environmental change in dryland areas of Eurasia, deepen U.S. understanding of relevant research strengths of the Chinese participants, and explore the potential role of satellite data in monitoring and modeling of climate change in drylands environment. The counterpart host is Professor LIU, Jiyuan, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.
The proposed workshop takes an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional approach and offers straightforward and important objectives for increasing our understanding of fundamental climate change issues. The workshop includes 5 early career scientists, and two representatives from primarily undergraduate serving institutions. The workshop will benefit from the presence of five U.S. government agency representatives implicated by the topic, who will attend with their own funding. An equivalent number of Chinese scientists are invited, including two experts from Uzbekistan.
