Invited by Professor Wenju Liang of our institute, Professor Yosef Steinberger from Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan Univercity, Israel visited our institute on 19-21 May, 2013. Prof Yosef Steinberger gave an seminar entitled as “A Climate GradientApproach - toward an Understanding of Terrestrial Ecosystem Function”. He started from the view that the carbon balance research on terrestrial ecosystem is an important part of research in global climate changes and the effects of soil microbes on the process of soil organic matter decomposition and matter transformation by demonstrating seasonal variations in soil physics, soil chemistry and soil microbial community under Humid Mediterranean Climate, Meditterranean climate, Semiarid clamate and Arid climate, he discussed the responses of activity, composition and biomass of soil microbial community, organic matter decomposition and efficiency of soil organic matter to temporal and spatial variations in biotic and in-biotic factors. His seminar was simple but profound, vivid and humorous and gave deep impressions to the audience. After his report, he had a nice discussion with the attendants on interested subjects.

On 21 May, Prof Steinberger visited the new buildings of our institute and exchanged ideas with the leader of the research group on matter cycling, Prof Xudong Zhang and workers in his lab.