Some people may be tired of the heat of the city, and some are yearning for the green of the wilderness. A variety of reasons brought them together for a few days in Inner Mongolia during summertime. From July 20th to 27th, eight volunteers and the Million Tree Project team went to Horqin Zuoyi Houqi in Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia to carry out a week-long forest ecological survey. Despite the scorching sun and torrential rain, the volunteers stayed enthusiastic about the field work, visting 7 forests and 50 sample sites all together, and observing, learning and recording a total of 14,398 plants of 45 species.
The volunteers in forest, Photo by Jiayuan GUO
The volunteers quickly squated on a sample of one meter square to identify and count the plants as soon as they found the sample site, without taking any break to appreciate the surrounding views or cleaning the sands in the shoes. This is the most common scene of ecological survey. It is in this kind of hard work that the growth status and ecological benefits of the forest can be fully demonstrated. Along the way, the volunteers also learned about a variety of unique plants: the formidable Cryptophyllum coarse, the beautiful Corethrodendron scoparium, and the ubiquitous Cenchrus spinifex Cav…….
The volunteers with the plant specimen they collected, Photo by Jiayuan Guo
In addition to the forest ecological survey, the volunteers also participated all kinds of activities such as vegetation coverage measurement, desertification workshop, and biodiversity workshop.
On the last day of the survey, volunteers put on the 25th anniversary T-shirts of Shanghai Roots & Shoots. The green T-shirt, which symbolizes harmony with the earth, blended with the vegetation of the forest, and the sweat of the volunteers and the hope of the green were sown on the land at this moment.
The volunteers were working on the forest site, Photo by Jiayuan Guo
Group photo of the ecological survey volunteers, Photo by Xian Liu