Ji Xiang He, Ph.D.
MI DNR: Alpena Fisheries Research Station
Research Fisheries Biologist
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Area of Expertise:
Stock assessment, fish bioenergetics, dynamics of life-history parameters, food-web dynamics
Background:
My undergraduate training in Fisheries had a focus on the study of the Chinese comprehensive aquaculture and fisheries enhancement in large and mid-sized reservoirs. From 1982 to 1994, I worked first as a research assistant and then a research associate at The Institute of Sub-tropic Agricultural Ecosystem, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISAE-CAS). The researches in ISAE-CAS included fisheries projects because the consideration was that natural resources, fisheries, and forestry, were all major components of the macro sub-tropic agricultural ecosystem. During those years, all my fishery projects were rooted in the research framework of natural and economic geography, landscape ecology, ecological economics, and systems ecology (ecosystem modeling).
From 1993 to 1994, I had a chance to visit The College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry, State University of New York. In 1995 I decided to seek further graduate training in Fisheries and Ecology, focusing on studies of the Great Lakes ecosystem and fisheries.
In 2002 I became a stock assessment biologist with Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Fisheries Division. One of my professional goals is to understand fish population dynamics from the perspective that integrates fish bioenergetics, food-web interactions, and the dynamics of fish life-history parameters. Toward that goal, human dimension and the practices of fisheries management frame the processes of a human ecosystem that my researches depend on and suppose to provide one aspect of services, and that I may not have sufficient time to be a specialist but better to be fully aware of the functional connections, which themselves are also evolving through time.