During September 19th to 24th, 2016 the 10th INTECOL International Wetlands Conference was held in Changshu Jiangsu. Tsinghua University Center for Earth System Science Ph.D. student Xu Fei, who is in the research group of Professor Si Yali, won the Excellent Oral Presentation of Young Scholars, with presentation titled “Local temperature and El Nino Southern Oscillation influence the arrival and departure time of East Asian migratory waterbirds wintering in Poyang, China”.

Awarding Scene

Award Certification

This conference was held in Asia for the the first time during the past 40 years. And there are over 800 domestic and abroad researchers from 72 countries and regions all over the world attending this meeting. The topic of conference is “heated topics of biodiversity and ecological system under global climate change”. Various seminars were hosted focused on the topic about protection of wetland biodiversity, wetland ecological system management, wetland and global change, wetland services on waste water treatment and ecological system, et al. With the aim of promoting academic communication among young scholars and development on the field of wetland, conference specially set 2 breakout young scholar sessions. Based on some certain evaluation indexes, including scientific quality, creativity and logic of presentation, interaction with audiences, respond of presenters to audiences, 10 excellent oral presentation of young scholars are selected by judges. The presenters joining these sessions are young teachers and graduate students from various university and research institution, including Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University, Nanjing University, Xiamen University, SunYat-Sen University, Northeast Institution of Geography and Agroecology Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Western Australia, Institut Pertanian Bogor Indonesia, University of Wisconsin System, Catholic University of Louvain, Universidad Nacional De Tucuman, et al.

Ph.D. student Xu Fei was exam-free recommended to Center for Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, studying for Ph.D. degree for ecology, and her advisor is Professor Si Yali. Her research field is mainly focus on seasonal flexibilities in migration strategies of East Asian waterfowl under global environmental change. The work of awarded presentation is based on 12 years waterfowl observation data in Poyang Nature Reserve and investigated how local temperature variation and EI Ni？o Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influences the arrival and departure timing of nine waterfowl species breeding in Mongolia or Siberia and overwintering in Poyang, using linear regression models. Results showed that six out of nine species show a strong negative relationship between departure time and overwintering temperature in Poyang. Departure dates also show a negative association with overwintering ENSO and March ENSO for two species. This study suggests that birds react to the annual variation of overwintering temperature: an earlier departure of waterfowls is facilitated by a warmer overwintering period, for more chance for waterfowls getting abundant food resources, and vice versa. The findings investigate the influence of temperature on migration time from the aspect of winter habitat, which could help quantify the potential impact of global warming on waterfowls.