Chinese and Russian scientists have accomplished a field
research at the border mountain of Altai after over three years of
hard work, which led to findings of new plant species.
Six botanists from Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAC) and Russian
State University of Altai carried out four field expeditions since
the joint exploration was launched in 2004 with the approval of the
National Natural Science Foundation (NNSF) of China.
After traveling across the low-laying and highland areas, river
valleys and Siberian plains of the Altai Mountain, which borders
China's northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Russia's
Siberia region, scientists discovered some 22 species that had
never been discovered in China and eight others never seen in
Russia among a collection of more than 20,000 pieces of plant
specimen.
Before the joint investigation, only a Chinese scientist from
CAC organized a field trip on the mountain within the Chinese
territory in 1955, but the mountain remained rather unacquainted to
many researchers in the past 50 years.
The latest joint expedition, the first and largest of its kind
in terms of scale and duration, will help to find out the overall
plant resources in the mountain area and facilitate joint
biological protection and future developing efforts, officials with
NNSF said.
Altai, also known as Golden Mountains, winds its way through
China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia for over 2,000 kilometers,
boasting more than 2,000 plant species, including 212 endemic and
17 endangered. The mountain range is also an important habitat for
rare and endangered animal species such as the snow leopard.
(Xinhua News Agency September 22, 2007)
