On April 25th, 2019, the first one of a series of talks that will be delivered and organized by the innovation team for grassland ecology and adaptive management research was presented at the No.1 conference room of the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Professor XU Zhuwen of Inner Mongolia University, who was invited by the innovation team, gave a wonderful talk to faculty and graduate students of IAE. About 30 people, including Prof. JIANG Yong, WANG Zhengwen, LV Xiaotao, LI Hui, LI Qi, attended the talk.

Professor XU’s talk was entitled 'The Driving Mechanisms of Nitrogen and Water Addition on Productivity and Stability of Typical Grasslands'. His talk mainly focused on two classic topics in ecology: “species diversity - productivity” relationship and “diversity - stability” relationship, but also highlighted the necessity to pay more attention to “global changes - diversity - productivity”. Prof. XU's study revealed that the increase in nitrogen and water drove the grassland productivity directly and indirectly by regulating plant functional diversity. He further explained that nitrogen and water availabilities impact grassland stability by causing species' unsynchronized responses. In the end, he had a full view on how to conduct global change researches at multiple scales and in different ecosystems.

After XU's talk, quite a few of the attendees raised scientific questions and discussed with Prof. XU. This talk has deepened the attendees' understanding of the structure and function of grassland ecosystems, and widened their horizons.