“When people are encouraged to take a close look at the remnants of nature, in its complexity, beauty, and majesty, and when they understand that the natural environment is the home of their deep history, many become the reserves’ most ardent supporters.” — Edward O. Wilson <Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life>, 2017


Research Interests

Marcoecology and Biogeography

“..that grand subject, that almost keystone of the laws of creation, Geographical Distribution” — Charles Darwin, in a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker, 1845 (“地理分布这个伟大的主题几乎是一块生命规律之基石” — 达尔文1845年在给虎克的一封信)

The core of Marcoecology and Biogeography is to document spatial distribution of biodiversity and related ecological and evolutionary processes. Taking the advantages of biodiversity big data (biodiversity informatics) and emerging technologies, we have general interests in large-scale biodiversity patterns and the underlying mechanisms.

Selected publications:

  1. Song, H.#, Ordonez, A., Svenning, J-C., Qian, H., Yin, X., Mao, L., Deng, T. and Zhang, J.* Regional disparity in extinction risk: comparison of disjunct plant genera between eastern Asia and eastern North America. Global Change Biology 27(9): 1904-1914 doi:10.1111/gcb.15525

  2. Feng, G., Zhang, J.*, Girardello, M., Pellissier, V., Svenning, J-C. Forest canopy height co-determines taxonomic and functional richness, but not functional dispersion of mammals and birds globally. Global Ecology and Biogeography 29(8):1350-1359 doi:10.1111/geb.13110

  3. Zhang, J.*, Qian, H., Girardello, M., Pellissier, V., Nielsen, S.E. and Svenning, J.-C. 2018. Trophic interactions among vertebrate guilds and plants shape global patterns in species diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 285:20180949. doi:10.1098/rspb.2018.0949

  4. Zhang, J.*, Nielsen, S.E., Chen, Y.H., Georges, D., Qin, Y.C., Wang, S., Svenning, J-C. and Thuiller, W. 2017. Extinction risk of North American seed plants elevated by climate and land-use change. Journal of Applied Ecology 54:303-312 doi:10.1111/1365-2664.12701

  5. Zhang, J.*, Nielsen, S.E., Mao, L.F., Chen, S.B. and Svenning, J-C. 2016. Regional and historical factors supplement current climate in shaping global forest canopy height. Journal of Ecology 104:469-478 doi:10.1111/1365-2745.12510

  6. Zhang, J.* 2017. Biodiversity science and macroecology in the era of big data. 大数据时代的生物多样性科学与宏生态学. Biodiversity Science 生物多样性 25:355-363. (In Chinese) doi:10.17520/biods.2017037

Biodiversity along elevational gradients

“Elevational gradients can serve as natural experiments for studies on community and ecosystem processes to long-term changes in climate and as test beds for models about the future of biodiversity in a changing world” — Sundqvist, Sanders, & Wardle (2013)

Elevational gradients have been served as Natural Laboratories for ecological studies. Mountains play critical roles for conserving terrestrial biodiversity, carbon and water. Home to great biodiversity and high levels of endemism, mountains are especially vulnerable to global changes in climate and land uses.

Inspired by the early works in elevational gradients, we initialed a regional research network BEST (Biodiversity along Elevational gradients: Shifts and Transitions) in 2017, to monitor long-term biodiversity dynamics of multiple taxa (e.g., vascular plants, mosses, soil microbes, and birds) under climate change and land use. Microclimates (temperature and moisture of air and soil) are measured and served as one key element to understand community dynamics across space and time. Some new technologies, such as drones and bioacoustic audio recorders, also plan to use for the monitoring. By collaborating with over 15 research teams with different backgrounds, we have set up over 200 permanant plots in 12 mountains across a large research area mainly in subtropical forest region of China. If you are interested to know more about the ongoing data collection, please visit our website https://best-mountains.org/.

Selected publications:

  1. Zhang, R.#, Zhang, Z., Shang, K., Zhao, M., Kong, J., Wang, X., Wang, Y., Song, H., Zhang, O., Lv, X., Zhang, J.*. A taxonomic and phylogenetic perspective on plant community assembly along an elevational gradient in subtropical forests. Journal of Plant Ecology 14(4):702-716 doi:10.1093/jpe/rtab026

  2. Wang, X., Zhong, M., Zhang, J., Si, X., Yang, S., Jiang, J., Hu, J.*. Multidimensional amphibian diversity and community structure along a 2600 m elevational gradient on the eastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Zoological Research 43(1): 40-51 doi:10.24272/j.issn.2095-8137.2021.166

  3. Qian, H., Hao, Z.Q. and Zhang, J. 2014. Phylogenetic structure and phylogenetic diversity of angiosperm assemblages in forests along an elevational gradient in Changbaishan, China. Journal of Plant Ecology 7:154-165 doi:10.1093/jpe/rtt072

Forest dynamics across space and time

“On the basis of a comprehensive description of locations, it will not be difficult to verify my species lists, and an increase or decrease of species richness in the future will be possible to detect with high certainty” — Josias Braun-Blanquet, 1913 (“基于对一个调查点的详细描述，我们可以在未来重新调查与比较物种组成，进而可以非常准确地监测物种丰富度的变化规律” — 法瑞学派代表人物布朗-布朗喀, 1913)

The only thing that remains constant is CHANGE. In biological communities, everything changes over space and time. Long-term biodiversity monitoring is fundamental in ecology and biogeography. Our research group addresses the fundamental questions in forest plant dynamics using the long-term monitoring data in boreal, temperate, subtropical and tropical forests (e.g., Canadian permanent sampling plots, US Forest Inventory Analysis, CTFS-ForestGEO and CForBio).

Meanwhile, with the huge helps from a lot of senior ecologists and young scholars, we took over five-year enormous efforts to compile the vegetation dynamic data in China’s subtropical and tropical regions. Vegetation Archive of Subtropical and Tropical regions in China (VAST-China) is the database composed of many plot (relevé) data on every type of vegetation in China’s subtropical and tropical regions (23°~33°N, 98°~123°E). Until December 2021, VAST-China includes over 10,000 temporary/permanent sampling plots. For each plot, the information were gathered on both the vegetation composition and physical environment. These data were collected by over 1000 different sources, including personal collections by ourselves and other researchers of East China Normal University, and published books, monographs or journal articles. More details can be found here: http://www.givd.info/ID/AS-CN-006.

Selected publications:

  1. Zhang, J., Huang, S. and He, F.L.* 2015. Half-century evidence from western Canada shows forest dynamics are primarily driven by competition followed by climate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA 112:4009-1014 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1420844112

  2. Zhu, K., Zhang, J., Niu, S.L., Chu, C.J. and Luo, Y.Q. 2018. Limits to growth of forest biomass carbon sink under climate change. Nature Communications 9(1):2709 doi:10.1038/s41467-018-05132-5

  3. Zhang, J., Song, K. and Song, Y.C.* 2020. History of French-Swiss School of phytosociology and its influences on modern vegetation ecology. 法瑞学派的发展历史及其对当代植被生态学的影响 Chinese Journal of Plant Ecology 植物生态学报 44(7):699–714. (In Chinese) doi: 10.17521/cjpe.2020.0054

Drone Ecology and Biodiversity

Spatial ecology has been called as “The Final Frontier for Ecological Theory”. Lightweight unmanned aerial vehicles (Drones) are revolutionizing spatial ecology within last decade. Using the drones equipped with visible cameras, LiDAR and hyperspectal sensors, we are collecting a huge amount of data in plant distributions, composition and functional traits. These data is using to evaluate the importance of horizontal and vertical niche difference in determining local and regional biodiversity patterns.

Selected publications:

  1. Zhang, J.*, Hu, J.B.*, Lian, J.Y., Fan, Z.J., Ouyang, X. and Ye, W.H. 2016. Seeing the forest from drones: Testing the potential of lightweight UAVs as a tool for long-term forest monitoring. Biological Conservation 198:60-69 doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2016.03.027

  2. Kong, J.X., Zhang, Z.C. and Zhang, J. 2019. Classification and identification of plant species based on multi-source remote sensing data: Research progress and prospect. 基于多源遥感数据的植物物种分类与识别：研究进展与展望. Biodiversity Science 生物多样性 27:796–812. (In Chinese) doi: 10.17520/biods.2019197

  3. Zhang, Z., Hu, J., Yang, Q., Lian, J., Li, B., Wang, X., Ye, W., Zhang, J.* 2021. An unmanned aerial vehicle visible light remote sensing image dataset of four forest dynamic plots in subtropical China. 中国亚热带4个森林动态监测样地无人机可见光遥感影像数据集__Biodiversity Science 生物多样性__ 29(9):1181-1185. (In Chinese) doi: 10.17520/biods.2021299

Research Grants

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