CMU researchers head to China


Professors in the College of Science and Technology are collaborating with a Chinese university for a week long trip scheduled for December.

Jiangxi Normal University in Nanchang, China will host professors from the departments of biology and geology and a graduate student. Located about 2,000 kilometers south of Beijing, the school of 40,000 is about one-and-a-half times the size of Central Michigan University.

CMU will capitalize on the environmental sciences program at Jiangxi Normal that has strength in geographic information systems and remote sensing to aid Chinese researchers. They will be sampling at Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake in China.

David Zanatta, a professor in the biology department at CMU specializing in molecular ecology, said his particular organisms of interest are freshwater mussels, clams and various kinds of mollusks. The area of the lake surveyed by researchers fluctuates dramatically between the wet and dry seasons, but in recent years the size of the lake has been decreasing overall. In a normal year the area of the lake averages 1,400 square miles. 

The lake provides a habitat for half a million migratory birds and is a favorite destination for birding. During the winter, the lake becomes home to a large number of migrating Siberian cranes; up to 90 percent of these birds spend the winter there.

Species found in these waterways can be harmed because of the drastic shift in water levels.

"If those species disappear, it's a good indication that there's damage being done in the ecosystem," Zanatta said. "Ultimately if you lose biodiversity, you're showing that's a good indication that the water quality has been degraded. That's a good indication that you're potentially going to harm human health as well."

Bin Li, a professor of geography specializing in geographic information systems, is the director of the joint center between CMU and Jiangxi. His main duty is to coordinate the activities between the two sides, which can be complex because of the language barrier.

"But that's not the main problem," Li said. "The political and cultural structures and traditions are very different."

Trevor Hewitt, whose research focuses on Unionid mussels and the geography of these mussels native to the Great Lakes region, is a second-year graduate student at CMU studying conservation biology. He will be accompanying Zanatta and Li on the trip.

"From my understanding I think a lot of this trip is about networking and meeting other people in the field," Hewitt said. "What we're going to be doing is going to Poyang Lake and looking for some mussels there and taking them back and doing some preliminary laboratory work, extracting DNA, etc."

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