Next time you stroll through the Arnold Arboretum, remember that it’s not just a nice place to x-country ski or smell the lilacs. The Harvard-run garden is a research center. This summer, scientists linked their climate change research network to a similar program in China. From the Harvard Gazette:

The project ties the efforts of center researchers managing 41 similar plots in forests around the world to a similar effort underway in China. The plots in both networks are exhaustively documented using the same methodologies so that information can be compared and used to better understand both the basic functioning of the forests and how their diversity affects their resilience in the face of global climate change.

Though led by Smithsonian and Harvard botanists, the center’s effort involves hundreds of scientists around the world. Harvard Professor Peter Ashton, the Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry Emeritus, helped to create the network during the early 1990s. The plots are between 25 and 50 hectares in size and hold about 4.5 million trees, from 8,500 species. All trees with a diameter larger than a centimeter on the plots are identified, documented, and tracked in recurring censuses every five years. Though the center network’s first plots were tropical, in recent years concerns about climate change have prompted researchers to expand the network to temperate sites, such as the Harvard Forest in Petersham, Mass.