Hanqin Tian, a professor of ecology in the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, received the grant from NASA's Interdisciplinary Science program to investigate Chinese ecosystem sustainability during the next three years.

"China's expanding economy -- the fastest growing in the world -- along with continued population growth will lead to land transformations in the next decades, including dramatic urbanization," Tian said. "While we have a qualitative sense that land transformations across China have affected and will continue to affect the ability of China's ecosystems to provide people with essential goods and services, our challenge now is to quantify exactly how the provision of key goods and services has changed."

Tian said China is an interesting country to many Americans because of its dramatic increase in economy and population, which equals approximately 1.3 billion people. Studying how the country has sustained development through such growth will be important to other countries, particularly the United States, which Tian notes is similar in geographic size.

He said NASA is interested in studying China's sustainability for similar reasons. "NASA is interested in understanding the earth's development as a whole. Likewise, many international organizations are interested in what is happening in China."

Using satellite data from NASA, field studies from China and an ecosystem computer model, Tian said he will study the changes from 1980 to the present.

"We will use techniques that have been used in the United States and the Amazon Basin and apply these techniques to China and Asia," Tian said.

One of the main elements of Tian's study in China will be exploring urbanization throughout the country. "It is an important phenomenon in Asia," he said. "We will look at land conversion from cropland to urban use and at deforestization."

As part of the urbanization study, Tian said he will also look at factors such as air pollution and overall air quality and how these factors have changed as urbanization has increased.

Tian, the study's principal investigator, is working with scientists from Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, the University of Montana and Boston University. The U.S. scientists have also formed a partnership with the Chinese Academy of Science, which is an umbrella organization supporting scientists from many participating Chinese institutions working on the project.

Tian said the project is one of only 59 proposals selected for funding by the NASA program, which received approximately 348 proposals requesting funds this year.