The Second International Symposium of Mapping Asia Plants Held Online

Mapping Asia Plants Plus

27 01, 2021

On January 20, 2021, with support from Alliance of International Science Organizations (ANSO), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Asia Regional Members Committee, and IUCN Asia Regional Office, Biodiversity Committee, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) organized the Second International Symposium of Mapping Asia Plants. About 200 participants from 17 countries attended the symposium via different online platforms and had a hot discussion with speakers. 12 wonderful presentations by the invited speakers from 7 countries were delivered.

At the symposium, Prof. CAO Jinghua, the Executive Director of the ANSO Secretariat gave a welcome speech at the opening session. He briefly introduced the history of ANSO and how ANSO promoted shared development, sustainable development and the advancement of the SDGs including biodiversity conservation.

At large regional scale, Dr. Ferry Slik from Universiti Brunei Darussalam shared his views on how to make an interactive checklist for the Asia-Pacific region. He introduced the checklist of vascular plants of Sunda-Sahul Convergence Zone and the online Flora Malesiana project.

At sub-regional scale, Prof. Richard Corlett from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, CAS, pointed out the great danger the plant has been encountering, also discussed the major threats for plant diversity in this area and ways to save them. Dr. Daniel C. Thomas from Singapore Botanic Garden showed the discrepancy between opportunistically compiled data and expert-verified data, analyzed the sources of discrepancy and detailed the progress of Flora Malesiana Checklist.

At national scale, Prof. Ori Fragman-Sapir from Jerusalem Botanical Garden, gave a brief introduction of species and rare plants from Israel, together with Flora of Israel Online website Prof. Hikmat Hisoriev from Institute of Botany, Tajik Academy of Sciences, presented the “Endangerment status and extinction risk of vascular plants in Tajikistan - the red list of the core area of the Mountains of Central Asia global biodiversity hotspot”. Dr. Alexey Seregin from Lomonosov’s Moscow State University firstly shared the general geography, biomes and resources about Russia. Then he introduced the published floras, electronic resources and basic patterns of Russian flora.

At the closing session, Ms. Aban Marker Kabraji, the director for IUCN Asia Regional Office, the Vice Chair & Secretary General of Biodiversity Committee, CAS, Prof. Ferry Slik, the Curator of the UBD Herbarium of Universiti Brunei Darussalam and Prof. MA Keping gave concluding remarks. Prof. MA thanked all the efforts contributed to the meeting. More cooperation is expected with other networks, taxonomists from Asia, especially from South Asia, Southeast Asia. More colleagues, taxonomists are welcome to work together for a better virtual infrastructure for plant diversity in Asia.

Source: Maofang Luo | The Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IBCAS)