The International Workshop on Re-greening and Ecosystem Restoration in Drylands, which was jointly organized by the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the CAS’ Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, was held from July 16 to 19, 2019, in Yanji City, Jilin Province. Nine foreign experts and eight Chinese experts attended the workshop. Dr. Ho Sang Kang, director of the Asian Forest Research Institute, presided over the workshop. Dr. WANG Xugao (on behalf of IAE), deputy director of the CAS’ Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, and Dr. Bom Kwon Chun, director of the the Korea Forest Research Institute, made welcome speeches, respectively.

On July 17, Dr. Umid Ruzmetov, Senior Research Fellow from the Uzbekistan Forestry Institute, gave a talk entitled 'Creation of protective forests in the Aral Sea region and a new direction for ecosystem restoration'. Dr. Myungkil Kim from the National Forest Research Institute of South Korea gave a talk entitled 'Lessons learnt from forest Rehabilitation in South Korea', presenting the experience that South Korea has accumulated in forest restoration over the past few decades. WU Bo, researcher from the Institute of Desertification Research, Chinese Academy of Forestry, gave a talk entitled 'Desertification and Its control in China'. The talk by Dr. Batkhuu Nyam-Osor, Professor of Mongolian National University, was entitled 'Comparative Study of Population Genetic Diversity and Demographic Structure of Saxaul (Haloxylon ammodendron (C.A.Meyer) Bunge) forests of Gobi Desert of Mongolia’. SONG Lining and ZHAO Qiong, associate researchers of IAE gave the talks entitled 'On the mechanism underlying dieback of Mongolian pine (Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica) plantations in semi-arid region, Northeast China' and 'N addition aggravated P deficiency in a semi-arid Mongolian pine plantation’, respectively. The talk by Sung-gil Lee, researcher of the Institute of Environment and Ecology of Korea University, was entitled 'Combating land degradation in Timor-Leste’.

On July 18th, the domestic and foreign experts made a field trip to the Changbai Mountain ecosystems. During the course of the workshop and field trip, researchers from different countries exchanged ideas about the methodology of re-greening and ecosystem restoration in arid areas, and discussed future studies in this field. All these laid a good foundation for future collaborative research.