Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, (CAS)
中国科学院西双版纳热带植物园

Thanks to the organization of Dr. Rhett Harrison and the support of the leaders of XTBG, Dr. Ferry Slik gave the first seminar this afternoon (April 6) in the new weekly seminar series to be hosted at XTBG.  His seminar was entitled: “What can tropical tree diversity, composition and biomass modelling tell us about possible climate change impacts on tropical forests”.  In this presentation, Dr. Slik summarized results from several years’ effort pulling together forest inventory data from over twenty different researchers for Bornean rainforests and modelling the distribution patterns against available environmental and climate data to discover the main determinants of plant species distribution.  The first seminar was well attended, at least by folks in the garden (Director CHEN Jin was a bit lonely in the seminar room in the Kunming branch), and generated lots of interesting questions.  One thing that emerged from Dr. Slik’s talk is that species composition will probably change considerably with predicted climate change over the next century.  Additionally, it is also very clear that there is still a lot to be discovered about the determinants of plant species distribution on the island of Borneo.