CONSTRUCTION has begun on a research center that is designed to protect Poyang Lake from pollutants and degradation through population expansion.

The center will facilitate academic research on China's largest freshwater lake and an internationally important wetland, in Jiangxi Province.

The facility, in Xingzi county on the north-western side of the Poyang Lake, would be completed in three years, said Yan Bangyou, deputy director of the office with the Jiangxi Provincial Committee for Shanjianghu (Mountains, Rivers, Lakes) Development and Conservation.

It would comprise a general purpose station, observation outposts that would track the impact of the Three Gorges Project on the ecology and environment of the Yangtze River at its lower reaches, and a facility for the prevention and control of water-borne diseases such as schistosomiasis.

With a budget of 12 million yuan (US$1.5 million), the center was a co-operation project between Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jiangxi Provincial Government and Xingzi County Government, Yan said.

It would also include a laboratory, a museum, an emergency response workshop, and host three websites dedicated to lakes in Asia, lakes in China and ecological and environmental statistics concerning Poyang Lake.

"I hope the center will serve as an open, international platform for exchanges and co-operation in lake-based wetland research and play a role in training of academic personnel," Yan said.

Poyang Lake, covering 3,583 square kilometers and with an average water depth of 8.4 meters is fed by five rivers inside Jiangxi Province and empties into the lower reaches of the Yangtze.

In October each year, tens of thousands of migratory birds begin flying in from colder regions, such as Siberia in the north, until April. Nearly one million birds of 300 species have made Poyang Lake their permanent habitat.

Though China has built a national-level nature reserve on Poyang Lake, the lake has suffered problems such as deterioration of water quality and shrinkage of the wetland following rapid human expansion.

Observers believe construction of the center will help protect the lake-based wetland and provide local policy makers with suggestions in their decision making.