CAS has always attached strategic importance to comprehensive research into the protection and improvement of the environment for human survival and the coordinated relationship between man and nature. Since these studies concern such fields as geoscience, ecology, agriculture, forestry and environmental sciences, more than 30 CAS institutes are engaged in this field. In addition, CAS has set up more than 80 field observation and experiment stations in various geographic regions to study resources, the environment and ecosystems, and initially established China's Ecosystem Research Network (CERN). By using space and aerial remote sensing technologies, a monitoring and research system covering various spatial and temporal scales consisting of space observations and ground observations for resources and the environment has been basically formed. A multi-level and multi-purpose information system on resources and the environment is under construction. So far, a comprehensive research system has evolved, with multi-disciplinary teamwork, bringing natural resources, the ecology, the environment, space and remote sensing technologies, and macro-agriculture together.

　　 Over the past decades, CAS has organized a series of comprehensive scientific expeditions and experimental research surveys both on land and at sea through extensive cooperation with domestic and foreign institutions. Together with a number of scholars well known both at home and abroad, thousands of scientists and technicians have been doing their utmost to tackle a series of difficult problems urgently requiring solutions concerning social and economic development, and in the exploration of frontier areas of contemporary science. They have made achievements of international standard, such as the theory of terrestrial facies origin of oil, geochemistry of strata-bound ore deposits, atmospheric circulation in East Asia, comprehensive study of the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its effects on the environment and human activities, principles and measures for the fixation of mobile sand dunes in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, comprehensive regional planning for agriculture, bio-diversity conservation and its sustainable utilization, and research on the degradation and restoration of the ecosystem.

CAS Institutes of Resources and the Environment