Undergraduate / Restoration ecology: UMN trasfer (educational interests and goals) [7]

In English, describe your educational interests and goals and what your plans are for when you return to your home country. Please include an explanation of why you would like to study the major you have selected.

Additionally, if there were any interruptions in your education since completing high school, you must tell us all activities that you have been involved in since then (e.g., employment, professional activities, volunteer activities, etc.) You must write this statement yourself without help from others. (Maximum 4,000 characters)

I am specifically interested in restoration ecology. This was inspired by my intern in Tianzhu Grassland Station. It's on alpine grassland-high latitude, low temperature and short growing period. Our missions were making herbarium and investigating grassland there. At the beginning, I was attracted by the outdoor activities and beautiful followers on the grassland. But after discussing with my teacher I understood that the more followers I can see on the grassland the worse grassland quality it was. Many of the follower plants were invasive plants, bad quality for feeding, even were toxic for animals. They were signals for grassland degradation or damaged. Once they settled, the situation would be worse over time unless they could be replaced by local plants. Based on the extreme climate, the grassland is hard to recover by itself. After the internship, I set up a career goal - become a specialist of restoration and help it recover, finally keep it in good condition.

After graduation, I came to U.S. with my husband. I took some ESL classes to improve my English. Now my English is ready, I would like to go back to school study restoration ecology and natural resources management.

If I could be granted the admission, I will choose horticulture as my major, emphasis on restoration ecology, focus on learning restoration principles and answer some questions in my mind, like how can we identify a successful restoration; how long we should keep monitor the restoration field; should we do something special facing climate change? Meanwhile I will also enhance my ability though internship, research assistance even developing my own research projects if possible. Minor in nature resources management is part of my plan too. Because helping grassland recovered is only the first step; my final goal is to keep grassland on ecological balance.

Studying in graduate school is also on my schedule, it's an essential part of growing to be a researcher. Then I would like to go back to China, find a job in university in the Northwest. I will propagate protect nature resources on grassland, research on how to adjust restoration principles for local environment and study how climate change will affect on grassland communities.

Is that too simple?

Thank you for your reading. I will appreciate any of your commemts.