A Year with WEEL: Thoughts from Yufen Ren

Yufen REN, a visiting scholar from Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been visiting WEEL and CAP LTER, ASU since March, 2016, and she will be leaving us this month (March 2017). Yufen studies urban ecology and works for Beijing Urban Ecosystem Research Station (BUERS), Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN). 

"During my visit to the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research Program (CAP LTER) this year, I was trying to help BUERS establish a feasible monitoring system, and fortunately Dan Childers, the PI of CAP LTER helped me get involved in lots of the field monitoring programs throughout CAP LTER. These included long-term meteorology observation, riparian herpetofauna surveys, birding, desert fertilization experiment, arthropod pitfall trapping, atmospheric deposition monitoring, flux tower operations, monitoring of stormwater hydrology and biogeochemistry, and more. I was also able to join the WEEL group for field work at the Tres Rios Constructed Treatment Wetland. This gave me some insight into the unique processes that occur in arid land treatment wetlands, including of plant mediation of surface water hydrology (the "biological tide"). I feel as though the CAP IV integrated research plan and those field monitoring efforts have made numerous contributions to urban ecology, and to some extent help bring new thinking to Beijing urban ecosystem research program. To enhance urban sustainability, I hope to perceive that Beijing metropolitan area as complex social-ecological systems, which requires a holistic perspective. My experience in Arizona, working with CAP and WEEL at ASU, will be hugely helpful in advancing this thinking."

Yufen Ren
Ph.D., Chinese Academy of Sciences
WEEL/CAP LTER Visiting Scholar, March 2016 - March 2017

We'll miss you Yufen!