2022-01-04
In July 2015, Beijing won the right to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, making it the first “Double Olympic City” (the first city which have been hosted two Olympic Games) in the history of Olympic Games.
In order to comprehensively implement the concept of “hosting the Green Olympics”, the University Council of BFU strengthened the organization and leadership, and experts gave full play to their disciplinary advantages to provide services for the Olympic Games in ecological protection and restoration, planning and design, wildlife protection, forest fire protection and other fields.
Professional research team led by leaders conducted field research
In August 2020, BFU signed a strategic cooperation agreement on ecological construction with the People’s Government of Chongli District of Zhangjiakou City for the ecological construction of Zhangjiakou District of 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games.
BFU mobilized 6 technical teams of ecological construction targeting at planning and design, forest and tree conservation, rural revitalization, forest fire fighting, ecological restoration and small watershed management respectively, to strengthen the organization and leadership of strategic cooperation and guarantee the quality of work, sticking to the goal of “striving to write wonderful papers on the land chongli and the heart of chongli people”..
Since December 2020, BFU has held several meetings to promote the ecological construction of Zhangjiakou District of 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. In October 2021, Wang Hongyuan, Chairman of University Council, BFU, led a team to Chongli district to carry out work research and promote strategic cooperation between the university and Chongli.
The green commitment of BFU is not limited to Zhangjiakou Competition area, according to Wang Hongyuan. He stressed that it is necessary to take into consideration the ecological construction demands of Yanqing district and apply the ecological construction mode of Chongli district to Yanqing, so as to make contribution to the construction of “a beautiful Yanqing”.
In the same month, the summing-up meeting of scientific and technological achievements of 2022 Winter Olympic Games was held. At the meeting, An Lizhe, Vice Chairman of University Council and President of BFU, had an in-depth exchange with the leaders of BFU scientific research team for the Winter Olympics, hoping that the whole team could demonstrate the spirit of undertaking responsibility and actively practicing in the construction of ecological civilization.
Getting the picture and knowing the truth before protection and planning
Professor Zhang Zhixiang and other experts from different disciplines formed the ecological and environmental protection technology and management support team of Yanqing district. Each team member has carried out ecological investigation and research work in this area for more than a decade and know a lot about the current situation of animals and plants as well as their ecological environment in the district.
In 2015, the team took the initiative to conduct inspections on the mountains once Beijing won the bid for the Winter Olympics. In 2016, after receiving the official commission of People’s Government of Yanqing district, the team overcame numerous difficulties and carried out a comprehensive background survey of ecological environment and biodiversity in the whole competition district, laying a solid foundation for the environmental assessment, planning and construction of the snow sports of the Winter Olympic Games.
Professor Shen Yingbai’s team from College of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology innovatively put forward the principles of protection technology, transplantation standards and quality control standards. Under the condition of poor site environment and anti-seasonal construction, they invented new technologies such as pruning and soil improvement to label and transfer valuable trees to protect precious trees. 24,000 plants were transplanted in summer and the survival rate reached 92.5%.
Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), praised the QR code scanned on trees at the ex-situ conservation base of Zhangshanying Town, which allows users to check the location of the transplanted trees, photos taken when the trees were transplanted and whether the trees are protected. “Organizing the Winter Olympics is important, but it is only part of China's long-term development. This is how China implements the Olympic Agenda 2020. Transplanting precious trees in Yanqing is also one of the ways of fulfilling the Olympic Agenda 2020.” Bach said.
In addition, background survey and scientific analysis on the geological landscape, hydrology and watershed characteristics, ecosystem types and biodiversity, wildlife diversity and other aspects of Yanqing district were carried out to provide a reliable scientific data for the environmental assessment of Yanqing district and Yanqing-Chongli Expressway through the songshan national nature reserve, and also proposed wildlife habitat protection construction planning for Yanqing division.
The joint scientific research team composed of experts from several colleges of BFU compiled the technical plan of plant and animal protection in Yanqing district and the technical plan of forest ecosystem management, the ecological protection manual for construction personnel, and the technical plan of ski slope vegetation restoration and maintenance, which provided strong support for the ecological environment protection in Yanqing Competition area.
Green Winter Olympics highlights the active practice of BFU
The core area of Zhangjiakou district, located in Taizicheng, Chongli District, Zhangjiakou city, is the main venue for the snow sports of the Winter Olympic Games, which will witness the awards of 51 gold medals out of 109 in total.
At the signing ceremony of the strategic cooperation agreement with BFU, Chongli District government appointed Professor Yao Peng of School of Landscape Architecture of BFU as the chief planner of ecological landscape construction in the core area of the Winter Olympics. Since then, Professor Peng Yao and his team has carried out comprehensive planning and design work for the core area and ecological corridor. Following the principle of “wide-scale, full-view and total-factor”, they divided the project into the winter Olympics competition zone, supporting services area and ecological background region.
The team completed the construction of ecological corridor and country park of more than 3,000 mu against the difficulties caused by the epidemic, bad weather and the complicated situation during the construction. At present, the forest coverage rate in the core area has reached 80%, significantly improving the ecological environment and making the area rank the top in the whole province in terms of air quality.
The forest and green land trees conservation group of Zhangjiakou district from the College of Forestry of BFU went into the greening site for many times, braved the extreme cold and heat to investigate the survival and growth of soil and trees, and guided the construction team in tree maintenance techniques. As a result, more than 95% trees and shrubs survived out of about 5 million.
In order to show the world the winter wonderland of the district, Professor Niu Jianzhi’s team from the School of Soil and Water Conservation of BFU combines modern information technology and traditional technology, adding green and other color to mountain area with hardy evergreen coniferous species of indigenous tree species and small-scale rose willow, replanting to improve the vegetation coverage and optimizing vegetation structure with forest restoration, tending and other measures.
Associate Professor Zhang Yunlu and his team from the School of Landscape Architecture carried out the plant screening work in Yanqing section of the Winter Olympics corridor from ecology and landscape and other dimensions, constructed a complete performance evaluation system for the plant landscape of the Winter Olympics corridor, and scientifically evaluated the landscape after replanting and optimization to improve the scheme. A number of scientific research teams work successively and cooperate with each other to jointly create a winter Olympic botanical landscape of Chinese style.
Focus on the “bright spot” and arouse more attention
Professor. Zhong Kefeng’s team from the College of Forestry built the smart platform of forest fire prevention as well as developed and designed supporting forest handheld telescopic detectors fire warning system, and bayonet cigarette butts and suspicious behavior intelligence system, forest fixed meteorological stations for the forecast and early warning of forest fire, providing decision-aid support for Forest Fire Control Center to detect snd control forest fire.
Associate Professor Wang Jin and her team from College of Arts and Design of BFU designed the visual guidance system for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. They presented the history, equipment, rules, field, movement skills and other aspects of 15 component of the Beijing Winter Olympics in a set of science popularization learning manual with vivid and intuitive graphics, expressing and spreading the culture and spirit of Winter Olympics while enabling the people to have a better understanding of the Beijing Winter Olympics. In addition, “Xinhua Net” launched a serial of special planning column “Winter Olympics in Painting” for the project with above 1 million page views.
Associate Professor Wang Jin’s team also designed a new “transit-oriented system” for Zhangjiakou, and they finally completed the guidance design of all the main urban areas after more than two years of efforts. As a domestic initiative, the scheme will provide citizens with more comprehensive information visualization travel services when they take a bus. The scheme is composed of “three maps and three models”, the former are the overall urban bus network orientation map, the 500-meter coverage orientation map around of the station and the text icon of the bus stop board and the legend orientation map, and the latter are the models embodying the culture of Winter Olympics, the city's cultural heritage and fashion personality.
