From the 6th-8thAugust Prof WeiSheng Zeng of the Academy of Forest Inventory and Planning, National Forest and Grassland Administration of China, visited the TreeMort team in Birmingham. Prof Zeng presented the evolution of the Chinese National Forest Inventory from the 1970s to the present day, including the incredible amount of work from more than 10 000 people that goes into censusing more than 400 000 plots every five years. The team discussed the various causes of tree mortality in Chinese forests and the prevalence of Eucalyptus in new forest plantations with extremely short rotation times of as little as seven years. Several areas of mutual interest were identified for possible future collaboration.
There was also time to meet the wider team at the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research, discussing topics ranging from enforcement of deforestation, to controls on forest fires, to beta diversity, and to visit the Free Air CO2 Enrichment experiment, thereby discussing a full range of topics that relate to estimates of carbon cycling through forests.
