In April 2012, Chris Craft (Wetlands Lab) and Susan Johnson (SPEA Executive Director of Development and Alumni Relations) visited Pescadero to meet Janet Duey-Murphy, the benefactor of the Duey-Murphy Professorship of Rural Land Policy. The goals of the Professorship are to promote efforts to enhance rural land reclamation and restoration, affect state and national water policies and serve as an advocate for rural land policy issues.

During our visit, Janet gave us a tour of her gardens containing more than 700 species of trees, shrubs and herbs collected from around the globe. We also made an excursion to nearby Butano State Park, nestled in the coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forest. We are grateful to Janet for endowing this Professorship in support of sound rural (wet)land science, restoration, management and stewardship!

In July 2011, Wetlands Lab members Chris Craft, Anya Hopple, Brianna Richards, and Melanie Arnold attended the Grassland Restoration Network Workshop hosted by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in northwestern Indiana. The workshop attracted approximately 80 participants from around the country and took place at the Efroymson Family Restoration at Kankakee Sands; an 8,200 acre prairie, savanna, and wetland preserve managed by TNC.

The two-and-a-half day workshop consisted of discussion groups to answer questions pertaining to prairie grassland and wetland restoration success, quality, and projected goals. During the conference, Anya Hopple presented her research on how managed disturbance enhances biodiversity of restored wetlands in the agricultural Midwest, using the restored wetlands at Kankakee Sands.

In addition to our work on plant biodiversity at Kankakee Sands, lab members John Marton (PhD Student) and Brianna Richards (MS Student) conduct research there focused on the role of restored wetlands in water quality improvement, carbon sequestration, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Scholars from the Wetlands Lab visited China for two weeks in August 2011 to explore potential collaborations with well-known wetland research groups in three Chinese cities. Traveling were Dr. Chris Craft, Yanlong He, Ellen Herbert and John Marton from Indiana University, and Drs. Steven Pennings and Hongyu Guo from the University of Houston. They were hosted by leading Chinese scientists, including Drs. Yihui Zhang (Xiamen University), Guanghui Lin (Tsinghua University), Baoshan Cui, Junhong Bai and Xiaowen Li (Beijing Normal University), Xiuzhen Li (East China Normal University) and Bo Li (Fudan University). Chinese graduate students Yanlong He (East China Normal University) and Qiang He (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) also played a major role as local guides.

At each location, Professors Craft and Pennings gave scientific and career development lectures, and interacted with Chinese faculty and graduate students about their research projects. The U.S. visitors traveled to mangrove forests in the Zhangjiang Estuary near Xiamen, and tidal marshes of the Yellow River delta near Dong Ying (southeast of Beijing) and on Chongming Island (near Shanghai), gaining an appreciation for variation in coastal wetlands across a wide range of the Chinese coast. Of particular interest to the U.S. visitors were the stands of exotic Spartina alterniflora (native to the United States) at all three locations, the rapidly growing deltaic wetlands at the mouths of the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers, the high levels of aquaculture and fishing affecting Chinese estuaries and wetlands, and efforts to restore wetlands in these regions.

Professor Craft and Yanlong he also visited the Chinese Academy of Sciences Northeast Institute of Geography and Agro-Ecology in Changchun and the Honghe Wetlands Field Station in the Sanjiang Plain of far northeast China during their stay.

The Chinese hosts provided extraordinary hospitality to the U.S. visitors. The trip was very productive, and researchers from both countries are eager to pursue additional steps to expand the initial contacts into full-fledged research collaborations.

The Wetlands Lab thanks the National Science Foundation for funding an international travel supplement to the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems Long Term Ecological Research program, and their Chinese hosts for covering many expenses within China.