Taiwan (National Taiwan University, Tung Hai University, and Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica), Japan (University of the Ryukyus), Thailand (Prince of Songkla University) and Indonesia (Bogor Agricultural University) have been organizing the International ecology and biodiversity field course since 2010.

Taiwan is an island in East Asia, which located some 180 kilometers off the southeastern coast of mainland China across the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan is quite a big tropical and subtropical island and has an area of 35, 883 km². Because Taiwan is located in the Pacific seismic belt, which means you can see volcano here, and have plenty of natural resources and beautiful scenery. From sandy beaches, rocky shores or beautiful coral reefs, you can go all the way up to see boreal forests in merely three to four hours. Therefore, high biodiversity is important character of flora and fauna in Taiwan, which also has many endemic species.

In this year, 2018, the summer field course will be held in Green Island and Fushan Botanical Garden of Taiwan, from 23th July to 1th August. The main purpose of this course is to offer an exchange platform for students and researchers from Taiwan (National Taiwan University, Tung Hai University), Japan (University of Ryukyus), Thailand (Prince of Songkla University) and Indonesia (Bogor Agricultural University) or other countries. This course will cover basis of biodiversity and ecology of marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

The field course will include lectures, field surveys and experiments in various habitats including coral reefs, intertidal zone (Green Island) and subtropical forest (Fushan Botanical Garden). The students could learn how to do experiment and analyze the data that they collected from the field. Moreover, they could have the opportunities to discuss their works and give an oral presentation. This joint field course will be highly helpful for participants to understand and experience more about subtropical and tropical ecosystems in Taiwan. In addition, there are many other advantages in this course. Among those, one of the advantages is a friendship established among the participants from different countries. There are also an excellent opportunity to exchange cultural traditions and knowledge between countries. Besides, this course is fully conducted in English, with 2 credits and transcript provided.

Green Island

Green Island is a small volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean about 33 km off the eastern coast of Taiwan. It is 15.092 km² at high tide and 17.329 km² at low tide, making it Taiwan's fourth-largest island. The island is administered as Lüdao Township, a rural township of Taitung County and one of the county's two offshore areas (the other being Orchid Island). The island once served as a penal colony for political prisoners during Taiwan's period of martial law, although today it is primarily known as a tourist hotspot.

Fushan Botanical Garden

The Fushan Botanical Garden functions as a living tree museum of Taiwan that presents its tree and plant collections for education, research, display, and conservation. Diverse endemic plant collections are maintained in the garden. Currently, there are more than 700 species of vascular plants have been planted in this area.(Excerpts from website below)

More detailed website: Fushan Botanical Garden