{"id":7849,"date":"2011-01-27T13:22:49","date_gmt":"2011-01-27T18:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=7849"},"modified":"2011-01-27T16:30:20","modified_gmt":"2011-01-27T21:30:20","slug":"professor-researching-climate-change-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2011\/01\/professor-researching-climate-change-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor researching climate change in China"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Liette

Liette Vasseur in a lab at Brock<\/p><\/div>\n

China is one of the world\u2019s top exporters of tea. But climate change threatens the country\u2019s tea plantations with floods, drought and invasive species caused by shifting weather conditions.<\/p>\n

Enter Liette Vasseur.<\/p>\n

A professor of Biological Sciences<\/a> at Brock, Vasseur has been named a Minjiang Scholar at the Fujian Agricultural and Forestry University<\/a> in the province of Fujian, China. For the next three years, she will spend time in Fujian studying ecological issues related to climate change. This includes its impact on the region\u2019s tea plantations and invasion of exotic species.<\/p>\n

The plantations are encountering problems with droughts and flash floods, which is impacting the important socio-economic activity, Vasseur said. The tea industry in the Fujian is estimated to be at least 1,000 years old, and is a major economic driver in the province of more than 35 million people.<\/p>\n

Vasseur<\/a> hopes to use field and greenhouse approaches to replicate the extreme events experienced by the plantations to learn what can be done to offset the impacts of climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a question of if (climate change) is coming,\u201d Vasseur said. \u201cIt\u2019s a matter of adapting to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vasseur will also study the impact of a North American plant species, Spartina alterniflora, and its impact on Fujian\u2019s coastal mangroves. The species was planted to prevent erosion, she said. But it has since spread uncontrollably and is choking out valuable shoreline, threatening the fish and shrimp industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis plant, probably because of lack of competition, has started to grow aggressively,\u201d said Vasseur, who will spend two or three months a year in China. \u201cIt\u2019s displacing the livelihood of this coastal community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vasseur is an internationally recognized expert on the impacts of climate change. Her research projects have spanned from Cambodia to Burkina Faso, and she has been involved in numerous committees and initiatives. These include serving as a current member of the Commission in Ecosystem Management of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, as well as past membership on the science advisory council of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. She was also lead author for the Atlantic chapter of the Climate Change Assessment Initiative of Natural Resources Canada.<\/p>\n

Vasseur\u2019s Minjiang scholarship is the result of a long affiliation with entomologist Minsheng You, an academic, and Vice-President, Academic, at Fujian Agricultural and Forestry University with whom she will collaborate with during her time there. She hopes to make her first journey to China as a Minjiang Scholar in late April or early May.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to good long-term collaboration, and a good experience,\u201d said Vasseur, who hopes to involve Brock undergraduate and graduate students in her work in China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

China is one of the world\u2019s top exporters of tea. But climate change threatens the country\u2019s tea plantations. Liette Vasseur is researching the matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,1],"tags":[49,3328],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7849"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7851,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7849\/revisions\/7851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}