In late January 2016, Wei Luo and Chaohao Xu of our group, conducted a flying trial of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), in the typical karst catchments of Mulian, Guzhou, Xiatang, in Huanjiang county of Guangxi province. After two-weeks of flights, they obtained the 3D map of these catchments, with high resolution and quality. The UAV has a flying height of about 500 m, and implements multi-angle imaging. It would be a robust technique to determine land surface (such as vegetation, DEM, sinkhole, bare rock ratio, surface roughness) in small catchments which is important for ecohydrology research.

On 28th. Dec. 2015, Dr. Liu was promoted to be associate professor.  Dr. Liu is mainly interested in hydropedology and ecohydrology, and has obtained important achievements in this aspect. 

In the Academic annual meeting of Geographical Society of China (South China, November 28-30, Nanning, Guangxi), Ms. JiaoYang addressed a report entitled “Effects of 'Grain for Green' program on soil hydrologic functions in karst landscapes of SW China”, and received the Award of excellent presentation.

In the 2015 Chinese society of soil erosion and soil water conservation professional committee (14^th Aug. 2015, Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province), Chaohao Xu’s addressed a report entitled “Estimation of soil organic matter content using hyper spectral remote sensing data in the Karst region”, and  received the Award of excellent presentation in student’s forum. 

   Congrats! Guanghua Xu's paper "Spatial downscaling of TRMM precipitation product using a combined multifractal and regression approach in south China" was accepted by Water on June 12th, and Meixian Liu's paper "Decreasing spatial variability in precipitation extremes in southwestern China and the local/large-scale influencing factors" was accepted by JGR-A Ariel on Jun 16th.

   During mid-November, Guanghua Xu, Meixian Liu, Jiao Yang and Rongfei Zhang went to Yiwu, Zhejiang province, working on a non-point source pollution control project. They collected data on hydrology, land use, pollution and social economics, and sampled soils of different location and land use types. Yiwu is famous for its smallware market, and has recently investing heavily on controlling pollution that comes with the rapid urbanization process. This project aims at providing effective suggestion for the government on its non-point source pollution control.

   Prof Xianli Xu attended International Symposium on Sustainable Utilization of Water Resources in Developing Countries during 26-28 Oct 2014 held in Guilin, China. He briefly introduced Ecohydrology Group, and gave a talk on our new study of precipitation extremes in SW China.

   By August 8th, the field infiltration experiments that has lasted 3 months, is finally finished. These experiments were performed at 3 sites (Mulian, Guzhou, and Mulun Natural Reserve) of Huanjiang county, Guangxi province, covering two widely distributed Karst soil types (calcareous soil and dolomite soil), and several land use types including: cropland, forage land, primitive forest, and several orchards with different fruit plants. Guanghua Xu, Jiao Yang, Chaohao Xu, Wei Luo, Rongfei Zhang and several intern students took parts in these experiments.

    In mid-June 2014, Prof. Alex Sun from University of Texas at Austin visited ISA for academic exchange at the invitation of the karst research team. He dilivered a wonderful lecture titled "GRACE data applications in groundwater model", and investigated Huanjiang Observation and Research Station with the accompany of Prof. Xianli Xu.

    Prof. Alex Sun has been engaged in research works on the management and decision making of sustainable utilization of water resource, water and solute movement in porous media, identification of pollution sources, karst groundwater modelling and management, mathematics, inverse and optimization techniques. He has published more than 20 papers in mainstream journals such as Geophysical Research Letters, Water Resources Research, Journal of Hydrology. Combined with field trips and study on his own experience, Alex Sun provided us with constructive suggestions on observation and simulation of karst area eco-hydrological process, and proposed in-depth collaboration on personnel training and Exchange, project collaboration and so on.

On June-5 2014, Dr. Dingbao Wang was invited by Prof. Xu for acdamic exchange. He delivered his new research  named “Temporal Scaling of Water Balance Models”, which focus on the water (precipitation) partition and balance at varying temporal scales.

    Dr. Dingbao Wang is an assistant professor (Ph.D. supervisor)  with University of Central Florida (USA), his research interests include Hydrology, Environmental and water resources sustainability, Coupled human and water systems and Sea level rise. In the past several years, he has published more than 20 papers in Water Resources Research, Journal of Hydrology, etc.

On 23 April, Dr. Xu and Dr. Liu were invited by Hunan University of Science and Technology for academic exchange. At the conference, Dr. Xu introduced his group and then delivered a research report named “Observation and simulation of Ecohydrologic process --- A Perspective of Landscape Ecology”, and Dr. Liu reported his study results on climate change in southwestern China, titled “Climate Change in Southwestern China based on copula”.

From mid Oct. to mid Nov., Dr Liu, Ms. Jiao Yang and Mr. Chaohao Xu investigated the soil hydrological properties in the typical peak cluster-depressions area. Three soil types as calcareous soil (Mulian),  dolomite soil (Guzhou), and red soil (Mulian) were investigated in details, these soils widely distribute in Karst region in Guangxi. On the other hand, several typical land use patterns were selected, as dry cropland, forage land, Toona sinensis, Zenia insignis, Citrus, and Castanea mollissima yard. 

During Sept.13 to Sept.15 2013, Prof. Xu and Dr. Liu, Jiao Yang and Chaohao Xu attended the 7th IALE-China Conference (Changsha, Hunan,China)”, sponsored by the International Association of Landscape Ecology, China Branch (IALE_China), the Landscape Ecology Committee of the Ecological Society of China (ESC) and the Physical Geography Committee of The Geographical Society of China (GSC).

        We presented three posters in this conference, titlted "Evaluation of high resolution TRMM-3B42 rainfall product using rain gauge data over complex terrain in southwest China","Study on the relationship between vegetation phenology and topography in Cijiang catchment" and "investigating the situation of rocky desertification in karst region, southwest China", respectively.

        Congrat! Prof. Xu was elected as a member of the IALE-China council.

    The rocky desertification mainly distributes in SW China (e.g. Yunan-Guizhou Plateau), where soil is eroded seriously (even bedrock is exposed) that results in undesirable effects such as low land productivity and fragile ecosystem. 

    For further studying ecohydrological processes of the karst dominated landscape, a team of ten specialists of Institute of Subtropical Agriculture-CAS, led by Prof Xianli Xu, investigated the Hongshuihe catchment from Aug-21 to Aug-29 2013. The field trip starts from Huanjiang karst station (Guangxi), and finally reached Guiyang via Du’an, Dahua, Bama, Fengshan, Donglan etc. counties. The routine has been closely along Hongshui River. 

    In this investigation, 37 typical points in Donglan, Du’an, Fengshan, Tian’e County in Guangxi and Wangmo, Puding County in Guizhou were selected. Rocky desertification condition, vegetation types and cover, soil properties, rock types and the artificial factors for soil-water loss were investigated in detail.