A dozen or so scientists from seven research groups of the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), including the Secondary forest ecology and management group, Landscape ecology group, Natural forest ecology group, Landscape process group, Forest ecosystem management group, Forestry and Eco-engineering group and Physiological ecology group established a featured innovation team for ‘Efficiency Improvement of Forest Ecological Barrier Zone’ and launched its kick-off meeting on the morning of July 5, 2019.

ZHU Jiaojun, chief scientist of the Featured Innovation Team, first introduced to all attendees the original intention and operation mechanism of the big team. As one of the major measures to reform the managerial system of IAE, a featured institute of CAS, "the big team is established to fundamentally solve problems such as the low-level repetition and 'fragmentation phenomenon’ in researches which are not conducive to discipline development, collaborative research and output of big things (major achievements)”, ZHU said.

ZHU then made a more detailed statement on the background and research tasks of the forward-looking team, i.e., benchmarking the "13th Five-Year" development goals and the CAS “One-Three-Five” Strategic Planning principles, and orienting the overall layout of the National Forestry during the “14th Five-Year” period and the shift in the national development strategy to build a 'beautiful China'.

ZHU Jiaojun emphasized the goals of the big team in terms of talents training, consulting reports, science and technology awards, platform construction, paper publication, project cooperation, etc. He hoped that all team members share resources and platforms with each other, collaborate and exchange well, and achieve great output. Finally, the other members of the team put forward their own ideas on their collaborative research in the near future.

The kick-off meeting of this Featured Innovation Team will lay a good foundation for the future development of IAE.